Order and accounting as a performative ritual: Evidence from ancient Egypt

Description
This paper examines the role of the discursive power of counting, accounting numbers and inscriptions in the creation
and promotion of ‘order’ in society. This theme is explored by examining the link between accounting and order in the
New Kingdom (1552–1080 BC), ancient Egypt. Accounting is conceptualized as an integral part of the assemblage that
formed the heavenly order deemed by the ancient Egyptians to underpin their world. This assemblage brought into a fragile
equilibrium a complex set of relations between the gods in the sky, the Pharaohs, their living subjects, and the dead.

Order and accounting as a performative ritual: Evidence
from ancient Egypt
q
Mahmoud Ezzamel
Cardi? Business School, Cardi? University, Aberconway Building, Colum Drive, Cardi? CF10 3EU, United Kingdom
Abstract
This paper examines the role of the discursive power of counting, accounting numbers and inscriptions in the creation
and promotion of ‘order’ in society. This theme is explored by examining the link between accounting and order in the
New Kingdom (1552–1080 BC), ancient Egypt. Accounting is conceptualized as an integral part of the assemblage that
formed the heavenly order deemed by the ancient Egyptians to underpin their world. This assemblage brought into a frag-
ile equilibrium a complex set of relations between the gods in the sky, the Pharaohs, their living subjects, and the dead. Any
destabilizing of this order was viewed by the ancient Egyptians as catastrophic. Accounting functioned as a performative
ritual that constructed coherence and order in the cosmos, on earth and in the netherworld. Accounting numbers were
frequently combined with linguistic texts and pictorial scenes in architecture to produce a monumental discourse that made
possible the construction and perpetuation of this orderly schema. The paper concludes by identifying the main implica-
tions of this argument for the theorizing of accounting.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
‘‘The organization of activities and of life itself in
terms of accountancy calculation was quintessen-
tially an ordering through which man, on the
scale of his own life, came nearer to the work
which God (the ‘‘great watchmaker”) accom-
plished on a cosmic scale” (Gortz, 1989, p. 112,
cited in Power, 1992, p. 479).
The role of accounting in constructing and sus-
taining order in organizations and society is little
understood. For the last three decades, researchers
have attributed roles to accounting that emphasize
ritual, mythical and magical dimensions but without
su?ciently developing the connection between
accounting and order. Thus, Cleverly (1973) argues
that accounting functions as a religious ceremony –
a rain dance through which key beliefs are kept
intact and previously attained order is rolled into
the future. Gambling (1977) suggests that account-
ing, like witchcraft, provides complicated rituals in
0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.aos.2008.07.004
q
Earlier drafts of this paper were presented at the sta? seminar
series, Department of Sociology, Cardi? University, March 2002;
Accountancy, Finance and Information Systems Department,
University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, Septem-
ber–October 2002, The Interdisciplinary Perspectives on
Accounting Conference, Madrid, July 2003, the Accounting
History Conference, Siena, September 2003, and Said Business
School, Oxford University, March 2005.
E-mail address: ezzamel@cardi?.ac.uk
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
www.elsevier.com/locate/aos
response to uncertainty by rendering possible the
accommodation of ‘awkward facts’ without under-
mining fundamental beliefs in society. Meyer
(1986) notes how accounting operates as an institu-
tionalized practice that can lead to a de-coupling
between declared intentions and action in order to
preserve the status quo and sustain order. By legiti-
mizing particular decisions (Burchell, Clubb, Hop-
wood, Hughes, & Nahapiet, 1980; Ezzamel &
Bourn, 1990), accounting can engender social stabil-
ity. In commenting on the signi?cance of double
entry bookkeeping (DEB) and Pacioli’s Summa,
Thompson (1991, p. 584, original emphasis) alludes
to the connection between accounting and heavenly
order: ‘‘God himself had worked the world in a
mathematical form. . . So it is important to recog-
nise that Pacioli’s larger project was to reemphasise
a belief in order sancti?ed by God.”
Pentland (1993, p. 606) argues that ‘‘the audit rit-
ual has succeeded in transforming chaos into
order.” Gallhofer and Haslam (1994a, p. 245) note
how accounting technologies in Bentham’s texts
relate to disciplining and controlling the poor, as
workers and transgressors were linked to an ‘‘igno-
ble socio-political order.” Further, Gallhofer and
Haslam (1994b) argue that for serious Christians
and the aristocrats the annual casting up of
accounts before God was a means of establishing
a sense of coherence in the careful regulation of life,
in the hope of bringing rewards.
1
Maltby (1997)
posits that for Goethe, accounting was a metaphor
for the natural order: ‘‘The provident nature has
bound herself to a balance sheet (. . .) (I)f too much
has been expended on one side, it subtracts it from
the other and balances out in no uncertain manner”
(quoted in Maltby, 1997, p. 83). Maltby brie?y links
accounting to the mercantile virtue of orderliness,
and the Victorian fear of having a commercial sys-
tem without accountability to the potentially unde-
sirable consequence of creating illusory wealth that
corrupts society and endangers its moral order.
Walker (1998) argues that under Protestanism,
keeping household accounts signi?ed adherence to
accepted social norms such as orderliness and thrift,
and contributed to preserving family cohesion and
domestic tranquillity by helping avoid the emo-
tional trauma of ?nancial di?culties.
The above literature provides valuable insights
into the possible connections between accounting
and order. Accounting is understood as a technol-
ogy that underpins social, moral and natural order,
by functioning as a set of institutionalized practices,
or as a ritual/religious ceremony, or as a means of
disciplining and controlling populations. Yet, these
important connections remain largely under-theo-
rized as order is not developed conceptually. Link-
ages made between accounting and order are
typically fairly general, without an articulation of
why accounting is connected to order, or how
accounting constitutes order, or what speci?c char-
acteristics of accounting render it suitable for con-
structing and underpinning order. Missing in this
literature is an analysis of how accounting can func-
tion as a performative ritual that produces and reaf-
?rms order.
This paper aims to address the above questions.
It begins by re?ecting on the theoretical conceptual-
ization of order, followed by an examination of the
role of accounting in constituting and reproducing
cosmic and worldly order. To explore the connec-
tion between accounting and cosmic order, the
paper draws upon primary historical evidence from
the New Kingdom (1552–1080 BC), ancient Egypt.
2
Due to space limitations, the connection between
accounting and worldly order, in social, political
and economic spheres, is explored by drawing upon
secondary sources. The paper interrogates the
extent to which accounting was intertwined with
order in ancient Egypt, where the ‘worldly’ and
the cosmic were fused into one single sphere of
belonging (Assmann, 2002, p. 170), by exploring
three issues. First, the extent to which accounting
legitimized and preserved the status quo in ancient
Egypt by reproducing and sustaining order. Sec-
ondly, the connection between order and time and
space, and how accounting served to underpin these
time/space conceptions. Thirdly, how the account-
ing technology functioned as a mediating institution
between gods, Pharaohs (kings), and the populace
by emphasizing restitution and reciprocity in reli-
1
In an earlier study, Gallhofer and Haslam (1991) show how
accounting practices can generate consequences that challenge
and disturb the underlying political order.
2
Egyptologists typically divide ancient Egyptian history into
Pre-dynastic and Dynastic eras. The Dynastic era is further
divided into Early Dynastic Period (3300–2700 BC), the Old
Kingdom (2700–2200 BC), the Middle Kingdom (2050–1780 BC),
the New Kingdom (1552–1080 BC) and the Late Dynastic Period
(1080–332 BC). These latter four Periods were interspersed with
Intermediate Periods each lasting for a considerable number of
years.
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 349
gious, social, political and economic spheres.
Accounting is here conceptualized as an important
part of an assemblage of performative rituals that
produced and secured order. The relationship
between accounting and order, however, is histori-
cally contingent and is strongly shaped by a variety
of social patterns that are formed at di?erent tempo-
ral and spatial junctures in human history.
The remainder of the paper is organized as fol-
lows. The next section examines the literature on
order, followed by a brief discussion of Egyptian
myths and conceptions of order, time and space,
linking counting/accounting to divinity. There fol-
lows an account of the context of the New Kingdom
and its temples, emphasizing the symbiotic relation-
ship between gods and Pharaohs. The two following
sections analyze accounting practices in ceremonial
texts. This leads to a discussion that develops fur-
ther the arguement that accounting practices were
an important performative ritual that constituted
and underpinned order, and a consideration of the
implications for theorizing accounting before con-
cluding the paper.
Order
This section examines the literature seeking to
conceptualize order and the relationship between
accounting and order.
Conceptualizing order
Typically, the question of order in social theory
has been coupled with the question of action:
‘‘Every social theory inherently combines an answer
to the problem of action with an answer to the ques-
tion of how a plurality of such actions become inter-
related and ordered” (Alexander, 1982, p. 90). The
literature on order explores two issues. First, the
form/level of order, where a distinction is drawn
between individual order that is underpinned by
voluntarism, and collective, organized order that is
underpinned by collective instrumentality. The sec-
ond theme discussed in the literature on order con-
cerns perspectives on the motivation underlying
human behaviour that maintains a state of order:
the rational perspective; the normative perspective,
and the theoretical utility perspective.
Those concerned with voluntarism focus on the
individual as a self-constituting atom distanced
from social control and assume that the only viable
level of order is the individual in his/her resilience,
uniqueness, and passion (Atkinson, 1972). Order is
achieved as individuals spontaneously identify their
personal interests with what are deemed to be gen-
eral interests through their feelings of sympathy
for each other, and egoisms are postulated to auto-
matically harmonize of their own accord to the ben-
e?t of all. Also, it is assumed that individuals must
be atomized in order to be free, an assumption that
has received severe criticism (see Hale´vy, 1972). In
the main, this literature provides no discussion of
how the ‘rules of the game’ that shape what is taken
to be the essence of collective order are developed.
In contrast, order can be collective, as exempli-
?ed by Hobbs’ work. The quest for order is the
underpinning thesis of Hobbes’ (1991, p. 90)
Leviathan; his analysis begins with a state of disor-
der, as exempli?ed by war where notions of just
and unjust and right and wrong have no place
because of the absence of common power and law.
Purely individual interaction results in chaos, that
is random, non-patterned action:
‘‘And therefore if any two men desire the same
thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy,
they become enemies; and in the way to their
End, (which is principally their own conserva-
tion, and sometime their delectation only),
endeavour to destroy, or subdue one another.”
(Hobbes, 1991)
To overcome chaos, Hobbes advances the notion
of the power of the sovereign, as the prototype of
supra-individual collective force; an arti?cial man
(Leviathan) that emerges as the body politic (the
state) with responsibility to preserve peace both
within and outside the state (Hobbes, 1991, Chapter
18). The role of the sovereign therefore is to ‘‘expunge
all possibility of war from within the body politic,
and to hold o? the enemy without” (Forsyth, 1988,
p. 143) thus maintaining order both internally and
externally. Hobbes’ emphasis upon sovereign power
and the construction of order has immediate import
to the world of the ancient Egyptians, given their
obsession with cosmic and worldly order.
Theories of collective order, such as that of
Hobbes, focus upon collective instrumentality
which, Alexander (op. cit, p. 100) notes, yields an
anti-voluntaristic, deterministic analysis of order
because it ignores the mediating role of societal nor-
mative elements:
‘‘Collective order is reduced to the external,
objective elements of action. Despite the recogni-
350 M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
tion of subjectivity and intentionality on the
purely epistemological level, such ‘‘sociological
materialism” allows no explanatory role to soci-
ety’s ideal, normative elements. . . If an instru-
mentally collectivist position is adopted, then,
‘‘motivation” as an explicit explanatory concern
drops out of sociological theory, and the volun-
tary component of action disappears.”
To admit voluntarism and intention to action,
Alexander suggests, social order must be related to
the normative, non-rational elements of action
(Hobbes, 1991, p. 103) rather than exclusively to
rational means, thereby constructing a notion of
collective internal order. The rationalist perspective
on order, which assumes that order is maintained by
rational and instrumental means, is dismissive of
collective internal order on the grounds that since
internal commitments are subjective in nature, they
are not ‘real’, do not possess any sanctioning power,
and cannot provide an answer to the order problem.
The normative perspective on order, which empha-
sizes subjective means to maintaining order, is also
as dismissive but in the opposite sense: shared inter-
nal commitments are held to generate too much
order and are therefore antithetical to the realiza-
tion of voluntarism. Alexander (Hobbes, 1991, p.
105) counters these criticisms by arguing that
‘‘The notion of collective order actually need never
deny free will in an individual case: it can and usu-
ally does refer to the probability that individuals
will act in a patterned fashion, not to the certainty
that any individual will so act.” Thus, instrumental
action is only one way, to achieve collective order
which can also be secured by non-rational norms.
Similarly, Parsons (1937/1968) emphasizes the
importance of normative action and suggests that
‘‘to describe collective order is, at the same time,
to describe normative action” (Alexander, op. cit,
p. 119).
The theoretical utility perspective conceptualizes
order as social tranquillity in the absence of strug-
gle. Shils (1975) understands order as the pervasive-
ness of common belief in sacred traditions in
society; similarly Dahrendorf (1959) and Eisenstadt
(1968) argue that order exists as a form of norma-
tive harmony. In contrast, Wallerstein (1984) con-
tends that non-equilibrium (or disorder) with its
attendant con?ict, rather than equilibrium, is more
typically the source of order. Alexander (1982, pp.
91–92) states that the above particularist treatments
of order yield a dualistic situation ‘‘when order is
emphasized, conservatism, equilibrium, and ideal-
ism follow; when order is not emphasized, there fol-
low radicalism, con?ict and materialism.”
Moreover, in these particularist approaches order
is de?ned in relation to one of three levels of reduc-
tion: empirical stability versus change; cultural ver-
sus institutional causation; and conservative versus
socialist ideologies. Such reductionism has led Gid-
dens (1972) to dub the problem of order as one of
the great myths in the history of social thought.
To move beyond such dualism and determinism,
Alexander calls for a ‘‘multidimensional”, ‘‘thor-
oughly generic conceptualization” of order by sug-
gesting that the best way to understand order is by
disentangling it from action and by admitting both
voluntarism and collective order:
‘‘A multidimensional perspective encompasses
the voluntary striving for ideals without which
human society would be bankrupt indeed, and
does this without emphasizing individualization
to the point of foregoing the communality and
mutual identi?cation without which such striving
becomes a hollow shell.” (Hobbes, 1991, p. 124).
‘‘Decisions about action and order are the most
fundamental issues to confront any social theory:
the positions taken in regard to them structure
each theory’s most general logic. Only if we rec-
ognize that they represent truly independent
choices can we recognize the range of permuta-
tions that this general logic actually implies.
Commitments to rational or non-rational action
are not necessarily congruent with, or antagonis-
tic to, commitments to any speci?c approach to
social order.” (Hobbes, 1991, p. 122).
Alexander (Hobbes, 1991, p. 92) thus argues:
‘‘the problem of order is the problem of how indi-
vidual units, of whatever motivation, are arranged
in non-random social patterns.” Order so de?ned
is a generic concept that underlines the production
of ‘arrangements’ or ‘patterns’. Organization,
coherence, standardization and systematization
may all be manifestations of order. Similarly, sort-
ing, or avoidance of randomization, and dividing
are means of achieving order (Bateson, 2000). These
conceptions of ordering focus more upon classi?ca-
tion of objects and practices which complement
those that emphasize human action. Such a generic
approach to understanding order is consistent with
Douglas (2002, p. 48) who underscores the drive
for consistency and integrity of cultural patterns
achieved through ordered relations, irrespective of
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 351
whether the emerging patterns produce con?ict or
harmony, or whether they are radical or conserva-
tive. Bauman (1993) connects the maintenance of
order to keeping society structured by administering
social space (knowledge, meaning, relevance). The
traits of ‘outsiders’ are considered a feature of
ambivalence, the very antithesis of order, emanating
for example from meanings socially attached to
such things as ‘dirt’, ‘unreliability’, and ‘laziness’
which signify disorder in contrast to ‘cleanness’,
‘rule-based calculation’ and ‘routine’ which signify
order. This conditioning of the meaning of order
upon the administration of social space is a useful
insight and one that connects with the ancient Egyp-
tian context.
3
Order could relate to cosmology or nature, a
theme that is particularly relevant to ancient Egypt.
Cosmic order inspires humans in the way they
arrange their social world. Plato (1929, Timaeus,
53-b) saw creation as the means by which god
imposed order on the chaotic universe and per-
ceived human action as an imitation of the orderly
acts of god (Plato, 1929, Timaeus, 47b–c). In Plato’s
Republic, the organization of society is ‘‘above all a
matter of order, of hierarchy; each particular man in
his place must contribute to the global order”
(Dumont, 1972, p. 44). Order can therefore be
extended from the cosmic to the worldly, covering
such domains as the social (human community,
the self and identity), the political (e.g., the ancient
Egyptian idea of the king as a supreme ruler sanc-
tioned by the gods), and the economic (e.g., trans-
parency, precision, and reciprocity in exchange
relations). These dimensions are intertwined: fear
of disorderly cosmos may act as a powerful incen-
tive for people to observe order in the political,
social and economic domains. Similarly, belief in
the existence of economic order may be taken as evi-
dence of social and political order. However, con-
ceptions of order can be competitive; for example,
despite the politicizing and intertwining tendencies
of internal-societal and global order, they have com-
peting demands for order (Touraine, 1991, p. 2).
The desire to secure order has been linked to the
performing of rites and rituals in many societies.
Douglas (2002, p. 90) notes how ‘‘the magic of
primitive rituals creates harmonious worlds with
ranked and ordered populations playing their
appointed parts.” She (Douglas, 2002, p. xi) argues
that taboo protects ‘‘the local consensus on how the
world is organised. It shores up wavering uncer-
tainty”. This preservation of local consensus within
a community creates a sense of stability that pro-
duces and underpins order. Without such stability,
disorder is likely to ensue as uncertainty permeates
activities, outcomes and beliefs ultimately leading
to chaos. Douglas (Douglas, 2002, p. 3) connects
taboo to the legitimation of ‘primitive’ rulers who
are ‘‘backed by belief in extraordinary powers ema-
nating from their persons, from the insignia of their
o?ce or from the words they can utter”, and in the
case of the Pharaohs legitimacy is further sancti?ed
by cosmic power, with Pharaoh constituted as god
on earth. The legitimation and a?rmation of rulers
via taboos act to invest rulers with order; indeed,
order becomes tied inextricably to perpetuation of
a system of ruling elites and their perceived contin-
ued power. It is the desire to create a world in which
rulers (and their ‘representatives’ such as clergy,
administrators, scribes, etc.) a?rm that which is rec-
ognizable and controllable whilst dismissing that
which is not fathomable that underpins the quest
for order. Thus, order entails both commission
and omission; the orderly world rules in and a?rms
all the normal, desirable elements that establish a
schema or a pattern (Barrow, 2000, p. 72; Douglas,
2002, pp. 45–48) and rules out all those that are
deemed undesirable or anomalous.
Accounting and order
The above discussion suggests that order, partic-
ularly in pre-modern societies, is conceived as a
means of organizing society in the image of heav-
enly order, and that order is maintained through a
3
Recent studies of globalization have tended to focus upon the
connections between societal order and global/world order,
whereby order is created through the construction of ‘‘more or
less coherent meaning complex of restoring an objective global
value-basis in terms of which societies are to operate” (Robert-
son, 1992, p. 73). Giddens (1991, p. 14) argues that the problem
of order should be viewed as ‘‘the conditions under which time
and space are organized so as to connect presence and absence. . .
[while] modern societies (nation-states), in some respects at any
rate, have a clearly de?ned boundedness. . .. virtually no premod-
ern societies were as clearly bounded as modern nation-states.”
This notion of boundedness is linked in Giddens thinking to the
global separation of time and space, and their re-combining and
standardization so as to appropriate a ‘‘unitary past. . . which is
worldwide [and] forms a genuinely world-historical framework of
action and experience” (Giddens, 1991, p. 21). This separation of
time and space, and the boundedness of the modern nation-state
underpin a context-speci?c de?nition of order that is not
appropriate to ancient Egypt, where time and space were
intertwined.
352 M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
number of performative rituals of which account-
ing, this paper argues, is an important part. It is
instructive to explore brie?y the possible roles that
accounting can be aspired by its practitioners to
play in constructing and underpinning order.
Accounting has several attributes that could be
exploited to construct order. Even in its most
ancient forms, accounting is endowed with numeri-
cal organization that could be deployed to create an
ethos of order. This includes, for example, arrange-
ment of entries in tabular or grid format, organiza-
tion by sub-totals, totals, and grand totals,
matching of debits and credits, and account bal-
ance. Accounting has been construed as a construc-
tor of value and a means of establishing equivalence
and value reciprocity in exchange relationships,
enabling measure-for-measure restitution and pro-
ducing an ordering of economic life (Ezzamel &
Hoskin, 2002). Accounting can be made to operate
as time/space ordering devices (Giddens, 1991),
since accounting entries typically entail designating
transactions by precise dates and spatial locations
hence serving to order both temporal and spatial
human experience. Moreover, through the use of
its metrics and performance reports, accounting
can serve as a technology of di?erentiating, hierar-
chizing, ranking, and ordering populations and
social relations (Carmona, Ezzamel, & Gutie´rrez,
2002; Miller, 1990; Walker, 1998). Such measure-
ment and reporting on performance can also be
used to highlight individual responsibility, helping
inculcate a sense of achievement and accountability
in the self (Roberts, 1991) which might encourage
voluntarism while at the same time promoting col-
lective order by creating a sense of shared internal
commitments to quanti?ed group or organizational
norms.
As a technology of measuring and valuing,
accounting endows certain activities with visibility
and hence renders them knowable, thus contribut-
ing to an identi?cation by interested parties of
which activities are admitted into orderly life. By
implication, things that are not rendered measur-
able through accounting are left out as non-know-
able and hence as a form of disorder. Finally,
accounting can function as a set of institutionalized
practices that help sustain the status quo (Meyer,
1986), or as a ritual (Gambling, 1977) or a religious
ceremony (Cleverly, 1973) with the aim of serving
the interests of particular individuals or groups. In
summary, accounting is a malleable set of tech-
niques that can be appropriated and adapted by
interested human agency to underpin a multiplicity
of rationales.
As this paper is concerned to advance the notion
of accounting as a performative ritual in ancient
Egypt, a brief clari?cation of the meaning of ‘per-
formativity’ is necessary. ‘Performativity’ can
assume a variety of meanings; however, ‘perfom-
ativity’ as used in this paper draws on the work of
Buttler (1993, 1998) who in turn draws on the work
of Freud, Lacan, Austin, Searl, Althuser, and Fou-
cault (see Hodgson, 2005, p. 54). As Buttler (1993,
p. 225) notes ‘‘Performative acts are forms of
authoritative speech; most performative, for
instance, are statements that, in the uttering, also
perform a certain action and exercise a binding
power.” The conduct of performative rituals, such
as accounting practice, e?aces the distinction
between talk and action by virtue of the ‘‘apparent
coincidence of signifying and enacting” (Buttler,
1993, p. 198). Repetition, or citation, of utterances
or conduct is a key part to the understanding of per-
formativity. This is because, as Hodgson (2005, p.
55) notes ‘‘’Performative utterances’, as both words
and deeds, are. . .citations of previous performances,
institutionalized through repetition and over time
become identi?able. This reiteration therefore sets
out a link between performativity and rituals, insti-
tutions and, ultimately, social structures.” As a per-
formative set of repetitive discursive practices,
accounting rituals are productive of the e?ects that
they name, regulate and constrain. In this paper,
accounting is seen as a temporally and spatially
bounded performative ritual, evidenced in individu-
als/institutions conducting a repetitive (both over
time and across space) public account of their o?er-
ings to the gods. Further, as a performative ritual,
accounting mediates between the Pharaohs (as giv-
ers of o?erings) and the gods (as protectors of
Egypt) in the repeated conduct of inscribed record
keeping of o?erings being made. The next section
examines the notion of order in ancient Egypt and
its connection to counting and accounting.
Creation, order and accounting in ancient Egypt
This section develops the argument that the rise
of the ancient Egyptian state and its notion of order
are related to the fear of the destructive forces of
chaos, and the belief that order can be sustained
only by satisfying the gods through repeated provi-
sion of o?erings and the Pharaoh exercising his sov-
ereign authority.
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 353
The myth of creation: order/disorder
The myth of Creation, known at least from the
inception of the Egyptian state around 3300 BC, is
fundamental to any informed discussion of order
in ancient Egypt. The myth is complex with several
variations (e.g., Assmann, 1995, 2001, 2002; Hare,
1999; Hornung, 1996). According to the most com-
mon version, in the beginning there was the Nun,
the primeval waters; a form of chaos that sustained
and regenerated the world (precosmic and extracos-
mic chaos; Assmann, 2002, p. 207). It was an undif-
ferentiated unity as the condition to which the world
would revert at the end of time. From these waters,
the creator god Atum/Re (the All; the Complete
One) created himself; a state designating preexis-
tence and not susceptible to description through
time or space because it precedes both. Atum subse-
quently created two more gods: Shu (male, signify-
ing air/light/life) and Tefnut (female, signifying
moisture/order, the pristine condition of the world
or Maat), thereby ushering the beginning of prime-
val time, or cosmic time (First Time associated with
the First Creation). The union of Shu and Tefnut
produced Geb (male, signifying earth) and Nut
(female, signifying sky), whose union led to four
more gods; Isis (female), Osiris (male; god of the
netherworld), Seth (male), Nephthys (female). These
last three unions heralded the beginning of histori-
cal time (Assmann, 2001, p. 121) and endowed time
and space with meaning.
Conceptions of time and space in ancient Egypt
were interconnected. Ancient Egyptian time comes
into being together with the universe, since cosmic
time or First Time emerged only after the creation
of Shu and Tefnut. Cosmic sacred time, abstract
and entrusted to the gods, was de?ned by two
words: djet, that designated timelessness: the stabil-
ity of the changeless realm of Osiris, Lord of the
Dead and neheh, or cyclical time, which involved a
regular return to the original starting point at the
completion of each cycle, signifying perpetual recur-
rence. As Bell (1998, f.n. 10, p. 283) notes, these two
words ‘‘de?ne overlapping aspects of eternity or
in?nity, and both are connected with the redemptive
aspect of sacred time”. Rather than being binary
oppositions, neheh and djet are a complementary
duality that de?nes and encapsulates total sacred
time.
Djet is ‘‘the sacred dimension of everness, where
that which has become – which has ripened to its
?nal form and is to that extent perfect – is preserved
in immutable permanence” (Assmann, 2002, p. 18).
As eternal time, djet is associated with notions of
stability, lasting, permanence, discontinuity, endur-
ance, resultativity, and perfectivity. Just because it
is seen as the opposite of neheh, or cyclical time, djet
does not signify linear time; rather it is the suspen-
sion of time, for it refers neither to the past, nor
to the future. Time in djet is at standstill and only
moves in neheh. Assmann (ibid, pp. 243–244) notes
‘‘Neheh (cyclical in?nitude) and djet (unchanging
permanence) were joined by ‘history’ as the third
aspect of time. . .The time created by Amun encom-
passed the events-themselves the work of Amun’s
will-that happened in it.” Time is not cyclical ‘in
itself’: ‘‘Cyclicality is rather a cultural form imposed
on the world by semantic and ritual e?orts” (Ass-
mann, 2002, p. 207). Rituals were assumed to ensure
salvation in the form of a renewal that de?es death
and destructive inner chaos. Cyclical time was man-
ifest in numerous observable aspects: e.g., succes-
sion of day and night; rotation of the seasons;
phases of the moon; and migration of ?sh and birds.
Cyclical time entailed the life cycle of the gods and
kings who ‘‘participated in an eternal cycle of death
and rebirth” (Bell, 1998, p. 130), whereby life and
death were seen as reciprocal states of existence.
Secular time signi?ed un-relentless forward move-
ment, such as the di?ering phases of life cycles that
can neither be avoided nor repeated. This
linear, historical time was the prerogative of the
Pharaoh as re?ected in his fate-determining
actions.
Maat: order in the cosmos and on Earth
The ancient Egyptian world consisted of three
realms: the sky (the gods) the earth (Pharaohs and
subjects) and the netherworld (the dead) linked
together through the concept of Maat. Maat signi-
?ed ‘righteousness’ and ‘truthfulness’ (Lichtheim,
1992), as well as ‘‘the principle of universal harmony
that manifests itself in the cosmos as order and in
the world of human beings as justice. . .Maat con-
tains the idea of the all-inclusive divine or religious
foundation of all order” (Assmann, 2006, pp. 33,
34). Maat ‘‘was the concept that gave meaning to
life by structuring both the human and divine
worlds” (Bell, 1998, p. 128). The nonexistent (uncre-
ated, disorder) was attributed to the destructive
force of Apep, a huge serpent that perpetually threa-
tened to drink all the primeval waters, leading to
entropy. Disorder entailed the collapse of cosmic
354 M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
order and Maat as the pristine condition of the
world established since Creation; the inversion of
social relations; and the dissolution of interpersonal
bonds (Assmann, 2002, pp. 176–177). For the
ancient Egyptian, the ‘here’ (this world) and the
‘there’ (the cosmos) were two sub-spheres that
cohered into a single sphere of belonging, and the
worldly was intertwined with the cosmic so that if
order in either sub-sphere were destabilized disrup-
tion in the other would follow. Hence, ‘‘Maat, the
quintessence of the laws that welded humans into
a community, was regarded as the holiest of the
holy, the supreme essence of all life-serving and sal-
vational values” (Assmann, 2002, pp. 170); an ulti-
mate ancient framework of accountability that
transcended the gods, the Pharaohs, the populace,
and the dead, for to observe Maat was to discharge
one’s responsibility towards all.
Maat was coupled with political power, since
‘‘The king is responsible for ensuring that maat rules
on earth. Without the state, the symbolic universe
would collapse” (Assmann, 2006, p. 33). A variety
of rituals were performed to keep the forces of dis-
order at bay, including the recital of 24 hymns, each
at its appointed hour daily by the Pharaoh (or pre-
sumably someone deputising for him) to facilitate
the safe passage of the barque of the sun god Re
as he travelled through the sky amid forces of chaos
(Assmann, 1995), the annual slaying by the Pharaoh
of the hippopotamus that destroyed crops, and rep-
resentations of the Pharaoh smiting the enemies of
Egypt (Wilkinson, 1994). Accounting was an impor-
tant part of this assemblage of performative rituals,
intended to construct a reality where order tri-
umphed over chaos.
Order, counting/accounting and restitution in
Egyptian myths
To facilitate the discussion of the connection
between counting, accounting and restitution in
Egyptian myths, a number of related terms are
brie?y delineated: counting, accounting, account-
ability and rendering an account. Counting refers
to tallying or reckoning items (individuals, objects)
so that they could be sub-aggregated or aggre-
gated. Accounting has several attributes: ‘First,
. . .accounting is a practice of entering in a visible
format a record (an account) of items and activi-
ties. Secondly, . . .any account involves a particular
kind of signs which both name and count the items
and activities recorded. Thirdly, . . .the practice of
producing an account is always a form of valuing:
(i) extrinsically as a means of capturing and re-
presenting values derived from outside for external
purposes, de?ned as valuable by some other agent,
and (ii) intrinsically, in so far as this practice of
naming, counting, and recording in visible format
in itself constructs the possibility of precise valu-
ing’ (Ezzamel & Hoskin, 2002, p. 335, original
emphases). Such a de?nition of accounting is
invested in writing, which in itself endows
accounting entries with powerful attributes (see
later), to the exclusion of oral accounts that are
less relevant to the inscribed historical material
analyzed here. Accountability is invested in reli-
gious, social, and moral codes of practice. It
entails rendering accounts by someone to others
as well as to self about one’s behaviour or activi-
ties (Roberts, 1991), and this may or may not
involve the use of accounting reports. Account-
ability is a pervasive way of making sense of the
world by rendering it observable and reportable
(Gar?nkel, 1967).
In what follows, the connections between count-
ing/accounting and three ancient Egyptian myths
are examined: Osiris; the contendings of Horus
and Seth; and the Day of Judgement. In the myth
of Creation discussed earlier, concern is with the
imposition of order over chaos, a theme that recurs
in the Osiris myth. Osiris, who was the eternal king
of Egypt, was killed and dismembered by his
brother Seth who then claimed the Crown of Egypt.
Seth buried each part of Osiris’ body in one of the
nomes (provinces) of ancient Egypt. Isis, the wife
and sister of Osiris, rediscovered the dismembered
parts of Osiris, except for his penis. A new penis
was made so that the body could be re-assembled
into a dead Osiris. Such a restitution, undertaken
in the spirit of observing Maat, signals a return to
order (Hare, 1999). The restitution was not com-
plete because the replaced, yet functional, penis that
subsequently impregnated Isis to conceive Horus
was not the original one. Horus, once a grown up,
embarks on avenging his murdered father by ?ght-
ing Seth.
In ‘the contendings of Horus and Seth’ (Clark
& Rundle, 1978), Horus ultimately emerges victo-
rious and reclaims the throne of Egypt (triumph
of order over chaos; return to Maat). Horus loses
one Eye, shattered in combat. Thoth, the god of
writing, record-keeping, and time, reassembles,
restores and renders an account of the Eye of
Horus:
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 355
‘‘I came seeking the eye of Horus,
that I might bring it back and count it.
I found it [and now it is] complete, counted and
sound,
so that it can ?ame up to the sky
and blow above and below. . .” (Clark & Rundle,
1978, p. 225)
Three implications emerge from this myth. First,
Thoth counts the parts of the Horus Eye, presum-
ably using one-to-one correspondence (concrete
counting) of each part measured as a fraction of
the full Eye (see Fig. 1), and re-assembles them
thereby ensuring that restitution of the Eye takes
place. Thoth thus engages in a public act of count-
ing the Eye fractions, and as a result of this myth
of performative counting restitution of the Eye
occurs so that the parts of Eye are ‘‘complete,
counted and sound”. Secondly, and despite the
claim of completeness in the quote above, restitu-
tion, like representation, is never entirely complete
as the restored parts of the Eye of Horus add up
to only 63/64 of the complete Eye. Thus restitution
reconstructs a di?erent reality which nonetheless is
taken to mark a return to order. Thirdly, The Eye
of Horus ever since becomes an indispensable count-
ing tool used by the scribes in their accounting cal-
culations, a system (known as the Horus Eye
fractions) that arranges fractions into an ordered,
descending geometric series 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, . . . , 1/64.
This system is deployed throughout ancient Egyp-
tian civilization to order, via reciprocity and restitu-
tion, o?erings to the gods, and economic and social
activities related to the state, the temples, and the
private domain, in the process constituting and reaf-
?rming rank and social status (Ezzamel, 2002b,
2002c, 2004).
4
The Eye of Horus thus becomes inter-
twined with a new way of seeing, for now the scribes
can partition anything, be it a bull or a loaf of
bread, into smaller parts, thereby facilitating a
new level of economic exchange and wealth distri-
bution. The link between the Eye of Horus and
the visualization of activities through the use of
accounting numbers, or metaphorically seeing
through accounts, is evidently already there.
In this myth, Thoth performs two operations: he
counts parts of the Eye as objects while simulta-
neously converting each part into a unique ratio.
The Eye becomes countable with di?erent parts,
each calculated to have a unique ‘value’ assigned
to it, even though no part is indispensable if the
Eye is to be reconstructed. These two operations
combine some aspects of what Power (2004) calls
?rst-order measurements (via which counting
becomes possible) and second-order measurements
(whereby the Horus Eye parts are aggregated as a
set of fractions) through which the Eye becomes
knowable, reassembleable, and orderable. The
Horus Eye fractions become detached from the con-
text of the combat between Horus and Seth, as they
travel beyond this myth to become normalized, uni-
versal tools of calculation mobilized in accounting
for everyday activities.
Emphasis upon Maat, reciprocity and order can
be seen in other ancient Egyptian myths. In the rep-
resentation of the Day of Judgement, the deceased is
Fig. 1. Horus Eye fractions.
4
For example, in a list of temple wage distribution, dating from
the Middle Kingdom, the chief priest and temple director was
allocated 16 2/3 loaves of bread, 8 1/3 jugs of Sd beer, and 27 2/3
jugs of Hpnw beer. In contrast, a temple worker was allocated 1/
2 + 1/18 loaves of bread, 1/4 + 1/36 jugs od Sd beer, and 2/3 + 1/
4 + 1/100 jugs of Hpnw beer (Borchardt, 1902/3). The di?erence
in these allocations visulaized the di?erence in rank between these
two individuals. Notice also that the Horus Eye fractions are used
in some of these numbers, thereby divinity associated with the
Eye of Horus was always present in even the most mundane
accounting entries.
356 M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
brought to face his/her ‘eternal’ fate. Fig. 2 shows
the process whereby the deceased (on the left) is
being led by the jackal headed ?gure to face the out-
come of judgement. His heart is placed on the left
side of the scale and a feather, representing Maat
as justice, on the right. The scales are connected to
order in a most direct way, with Maat, the goddess
of order being placed, as an indispensable part, at
the top of the central part of the scales with her
feather headed representation. The process is
endowed with legitimacy, transparency, and order
with the gods, representing each of the ancient
Egyptian nomes, watching over (at the top), Osiris,
god of the underworld setting on his throne also
watching the process (on the far right) and Thoth,
the ibis headed ?gure) holding the scribal pallet
and accounting for the deeds of the deceased.
This emphasis on Maat, balance, reciprocity and
order is reproduced most poignantly in real life, in
daily exchange transactions. In Fig. 3 below, an
identical set of scales to those shown in Fig. 2 are
reproduced, with the goddess Maat being the central
part of the scales, except that now commodities
exchanged replace the heart and feather, and Thoth
is not represented as overseeing the exchange pro-
cess, although of course he may be assumed to be
ever-present. In their daily lives, the expectation
therefore was for the ancient Egyptians to extend
their cosmic harmony and order, in the form of
Maat, into the netherworld as well as into their daily
life, by observing measure-for-measure reciprocity.
Thoth evidently then plays a central role in
accounting for and inscribing a variety of deeds in
the above myths. Thoth was the sacred repository
of knowledge, the scribe to the gods, and a god of
order and peace: ‘‘the skill of his words brings order
to warring factions” (Hart, 1986, p. 215). With his
cult going back to at least Dynasty one (Watterson,
1996), Thoth was responsible for recording all the
souls entering the Underworld, and in charge of
the balance on the Day of Judgement (Fig. 2).
Inscriptions by Thoth were divine, and a key ritual
intended to signal a state of order. Not much more
is known exactly about what else Thoth inscribed,
nor how he accounted for things. However, his link
to scribes and their activities was most direct; he was
their god-patron, watching over them so that they
did not abuse their skills in order to obtain illicit
gains (Hart, 1986). His cult was powerful, as evi-
denced in numerous shrines held for him in scribal
homes, and libations made by the scribes to him
at the start of each day’s work (Watterson, 1996).
Thus, both counting and accounting for objects,
deeds and conduct had a symbiotic relationship and
played a major part in ordering the world of the
ancient Egyptians. In contrast to Western societies
where it has been argued that di?erent ways of
counting and calculations ‘‘have been borrowed
from domains such as engineering, actuarial science,
and economics” (Miller & Napier, 1993, p. 632), in
ancient Egypt counting was already there from the
genesis of the myth of Osiris, before the emergence
of such domains as engineering or economics. Given
the strong evidence on the rise of accounting before,
or at the very least simultaneously with, writing in
ancient Egypt (Davies & Friedman, 1998; Ezzamel
Fig. 2. Day of judgement.
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 357
& Hoskin, 2002), the genesis of counting seems to be
inseparable from the genesis of accounting.
The above myths suggest that, from their genesis,
counting and accounting were invested in divinity.
At the most basic level, the connection between
accounting and divinity can be ascertained through
the medium of writing, which constituted a dimen-
sion of divine presence, with the hieroglyphic script
being canonized as ‘‘divine speech” (Assmann,
2002, p. 238). Accounting as a form of inscription
was equally endowed with this dimension of divin-
ity. As the god of record-keeping, the connection
between Thoth and accounting is evident. Further,
given Thoth as the god of time, with time and space
for the ancient Egyptians being indivisible, the
above three myths are indicative of a strong link
between accounting, divinity, time and space. If this
observation has any validity, then it could be argued
more generally that the association between Thoth
and accounting implies that, from its inception,
the connection between order and accounting was
both temporally and spatially embedded. These sug-
gestions are in sharp contrast to much of the extant
literature on accounting in religious institutions,
where the focus is upon functional, housekeeping
and monitoring issues with accounting viewed as a
profane activity (e.g., Booth, 1993; Duncan, Fle-
sher, & Stocks, 1999; Flesher & Flesher, 1979;
Laughlin, 1988; Lightbody, 2000; Swanson & Gard-
ner, 1988; but see Ezzamel, 2005; Quattrone, 2004).
The new kingdom: context and temples
The middle kingdom (see footnote 2) was fol-
lowed by the second intermediate period (1780–
1552 BC) which witnessed the collapse of central
authority, the emergence of centres of local power,
and the invasion of Egypt by the Asiatic Hyksos.
With the defeat of the Hyksos, the new kingdom
(XVIII–XX dynasties: 1552–1080 BC) was born
(Kuhrt, 1997, p. 173) and its Pharaohs soon
embarked on foreign conquest and the building of
Fig. 3. Scales for private exchange.
358 M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
a large empire that boasted immense wealth and sta-
bility (Kemp, 1989, p. 183). Expansion through
empire marked a radical di?erence from past king-
doms when instead Egypt sought her security by
subordinating, or building alliances with, neigh-
bouring countries. The restructuring of the state
involved the introduction of centralized control
over the provinces, with the political, social and eco-
nomic structures continuing to be assumed as part
of an immutable order of the universe symbolized
by Maat. Kingship continued to be promoted as a
heavenly right and a necessary condition for secur-
ing order (Kemp, 1989; Kuhrt, 1997).
During the new kingdom, full-time priesthood
began for the ?rst time, signifying the increased
importance of conducting rituals in temples (Shafer,
1998, p. 9). New kingdom temples played a crucial
role in ancient Egypt: ‘‘The temple was a branch
of cosmic government and participated in the order
of the universe by sun and king. It served Pharaonic
governance by maintaining the cosmos ritually”
(Shafer, 1998, p. 8). The evidence discussed later
relates to this context, with accounting being part
of the assemblage of performative rituals practiced
in the temples to produce and preserve cosmic
order, and conducted outside temples to underpin
social, political and economic order.
Temples
The temples of ancient Egypt were the loci of per-
petual struggle and opposition between order and
chaos and the interaction of sacred and secular time
and space. It was in the temples that the sky, earth
and netherworld came together: ‘‘These three realms
converged in temples and cohered in rituals. There
the power of creation was tapped, chaos was bri-
dled, and cosmic order was renewed.” (Shafer,
1998, p. 1). Hence, temples are important locations
for examining the role of accounting, as a performa-
tive ritual, in constituting and preserving order.
Order and disorder were bounded by space and
time. Temple sacred space was where orientation
to the cosmos and immersion in primordial order
occurred, a space where the ‘dead’ Pharaoh came
into direct contact with divinity, where gods and
Pharaoh became transparent to one another. It
was there that the ‘dead’ Pharaoh experienced truth
and regeneration of life (Shafer, 1998). Secular
space was where acts of worship and cult preserva-
tion by the priests took place, as well as worldly
matters such as maintenance and building work,
provision and distribution of o?erings, and other
administrative and accounting activities. Thus, the
temple was the site of distinguishable, yet inter-
twined, sacred and secular space.
Much of the evidence analyzed below relates to
the so-called temples of Millions of Years which,
although dating back to Dynasty 13 (Middle King-
dom), became more prominent during the New
Kingdom (Haeny, 1998). They were built to pay
homage to the Pharaohs, to celebrate and glorify
their achievements and their observing of Maat,
and to consolidate their union with divinity
(Leblanc, 1997). To honour the gods, not only were
their names glori?ed in prayers, but also o?erings
were made to them in return for their preservation
of cosmic and worldly order. In the name of
Empire, the New Kingdom ushered a new dawn
of a signi?cantly expanded Egyptian world that
required godly protection for a large geographical
space with a multiracial mix. The lavish and expan-
sive temple building program throughout the new
kingdom was a celebration of the importance of
temples to cosmic and worldly order, and temple rit-
uals, including accounting, were accorded a signi?-
cant scope to function as performative rituals
aimed at constructing and sustaining order.
Number, number on the wall: accounting and order in
ceremonial texts
This section explores the connection between
accounting and order by examining entries of o?er-
ings made by the Pharaohs to the gods ranging from
daily through monthly to annually; for example
Ramesses II declares (Kitchen, 1996, p. 570):
‘‘I have endowed for him [god] the sacred o?er-
ings: regular daily o?erings, (lunar) feasts whose
days come on their appointed dates; and annual
calendar feasts throughout the year, over and
above the food o?erings that are forthcoming
in the (divine) presence, at the head of the sacred
o?erings for Ptah.”
Below, the o?erings in the following sources are
analyzed: dedication texts, calendars of feasts, o?er-
ing lists, scenes in temples and tombs, and papyri.
Dedication texts
Dedication texts are inscriptions carved on tem-
ple walls or stelae to inform the gods of new temple
restorations or buildings initiated by the Pharaoh
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 359
and provision of o?erings. For example, Amenho-
tep III (1390–1352 BC) boasts of the wealth he
amassed in the temple of the Memnon Colossi
(Breasted, 1906/1988, part two, pp. 356–357):
‘‘It is supplied with a ‘Station of the King’,
wrought with gold and many costly stones. . .Its
storehouses contain all good things, whose num-
ber is not known. . .its cattle are like the sand of
the shore, they make up millions.”
This text does not provide precise enumeration,
counting and valuation of o?erings made. Rather,
it establishes a claim of a dedication by the Pharaoh
to the god whereby nothing is apparently spared
‘‘all good things”, of such large numbers as to make
their counting meaningless because they are like
‘‘the sand of the shore”. Even when enumeration
is used, ‘‘they make up millions”, the text remains
silent as to exactly how many millions. To the extent
that such dedication texts contain any numbers,
these numbers are rhetorical indicating plenitude.
The text also underscores the intimate symbiosis
between Pharaoh and god demonstrating Pharaoh’s
observation of Maat (o?erings reciprocating gods’
protection of Egypt).
One example where numbers intervene in dedica-
tion texts is engraved in the Karnak temple from the
reign of Amenhotep III, where the weights of the
monuments built are stated in deben,
5
a money of
account, along with other items (Breasted, 1906/
1988, part two, pp. 367–378). Even though we here
encounter apparently more precise numbers (e.g.
Malachite: 4820 deben), the text aims to demon-
strate the Pharaoh’s upholding of Maat by valuing
Malachite. This style continued for a considerable
time, and it was not until the reign of Ramesses
III that more detailed dedications emerged
(Breasted, 1906/1988, part four, pp. 7, 40, and
150), yielding three observations. First, o?erings
began to be identi?ed by type, e.g., grain, cattle,
gold and silver, and location, e.g. Kush. Secondly,
o?erings were valued using the deben as a money
of account, for example (Breasted, 1906/1988, p.
16):
‘‘1. Gold of Kush.
2. Gold, 1000 deben.
3. Gold of the mountain.
4. Gold of the water, 1000 deben.
5. Gold of Edfu.
6. Gold of Ombos, 1000 deben.
7. Gold of Coptos.
8. Lapis lazuli of Tefrer.”
It is possible that the values of 1000 deben above
do not signal precise numbers,
6
yet this money of
account valuation is used so that ‘‘I (Ramesses
III) might present them to thee by the measure”
(Breasted, 1906/1988, p. 16). Here, accounting
inscriptions intervene to endow the o?erings with
a myth of an orderly organization and precise valu-
ation. This quest for valuation was further rein-
forced by an increased use of accounting and
administrative vocabularies, e.g., revenues and
taxes. For example, Ramesses III addresses Amun
(Breasted, 1906/1988, p. 82) ‘‘I taxed them (con-
quered countries) for their impost every year, every
town by its name, gathered together, bearing their
tribute, to bring them [to] thy ka, O lord of gods.”
Further, the Pharaoh announces (Haring, 1997,
pp. 44, 47) ‘‘I made Your ?xed portion festive with
bread and beer. . .The provision of the Ennead is in
accordance with their number. . .Others are at their
tasks in every work, in order to provide for Your
?xed portion of daily requirements.” An orderly
administrative cycle of collection and provision of
goods unfolds in these dedication texts, with
accounting calculations determining the ‘‘?xed
portion” su?cient for the god’s ‘‘daily requirement”
and the ?xed allocations for members of the
Ennead, depending upon their numbers, thereby
rea?rming orderly o?erings.
The third observation is the tendency to con?rm
dedications by inscribing them: Ramesses III
declares to the god: ‘‘All the products of the South-
land are in the writings of Thoth; they are for thy
house of millions of years” (Breasted, 1906/1988,
p. 18). Inscribing dedications through the medium
of sacred writing by Thoth endowed dedications
to gods with express divine qualities and was also
a means of ensuring godly ownership of o?erings.
Thus, Ramesses III states to Amun (Breasted,
1906/1988, p. 82), ‘‘I have put its (property) posi-
tions into writing, that I might inclose them in thy
grasp. I made for thee thy property lists, that they
might be forever and [ever] in thy name.” Inscribing
5
The deben is a member of a family of ‘monies of account’ in
ancient Egypt. It was equivalent to approximately 91 g of the
particular object to which it was related, e.g., gold, silver
(Janssen, 1975, pp. 101–102).
6
It is also possible that the number ‘1000’ signi?ed what is
considered a ‘good’ kingly o?er of precious metals to the gods.
360 M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
o?erings provides a record that demonstrates the
preservation of the status quo and establishes expec-
tations of inde?nite repetition of o?erings in cyclical
time, neheh, and in a changeless, perfect form, djet.
Inscribing o?erings underscores their recurrence
and endurance, as writing provides a storage of past
activities, and is therefore di?cult to obfuscate or
erase from memory compared to oral accounts
(Assmann, 2006).
In summary, even in the case of dedication texts,
arguably the least likely texts to exhibit much
accounting content, we discern a gradual interven-
tion of accounting over time. These texts were pri-
marily concerned with the symbolic and
ceremonial, with greater use of accounting inscrip-
tions considered a means of providing a permanent
record that underscores the symbiotic relationship
between gods and Pharaohs, keeping the gods satis-
?ed and maintaining cosmic and worldly order.
Calendars of feasts and o?ering lists
O?ering lists were inscribed on outside temple
walls, typically as royal decrees stipulating revisions
in the o?erings established previously in calendar
lists (Haring, 1997, p. 93). Given this similarity, dis-
cussion here focuses upon calendar lists which
record pledges of o?erings for feasts. The most
important calendars of the new kingdom are those
of Ramesses II and Ramesses III; the latter, better
preserved, was copied from the former, and was also
inscribed on Papyrus Harris I (e.g. Grandet, 1994).
The calendars contain entries indicating the occa-
sion of the o?ering, the recipient, an enumeration of
the items of the o?ering and their sources, and in the
case of bread and beer their baking ratios, a picto-
rial representation of the items, the relevant num-
bers, and the grand total. The calendar is divided
into two main sections with bread and beer (and
the corresponding amounts of di?erent grains
required) entered into the ?rst part and non-cereal
items (e.g. vegetables) entered into the second part.
Table 1 below shows the o?ering list of one day
of the feast of Osiris from the Abydos temple, reign
of Ramesses II. Having designated the precise date,
month and season, the list enumerates the quantities
of foods relating to that day. The most prominent
item is bread, divided initially into broad categories,
such as bit bread (conical loaves made of barley),
psn bread (?at, circular loaves made of emmer
wheat), white bread, etc. To demarcate ?ner catego-
ries still, four di?erent types of bit bread are di?er-
entiated by baking ratios (BR, a measure of
baking dilution) ranging from 5 to 100 per hekat/
heqat (hekat = 4.8 l).
7
A further calculation converts
a given number of bread loaves with a particular
baking ratio into its equivalent in oipe (=19.22 l),
a money of account. This is achieved by dividing
the number of bread loaves by the baking ratio;
for example, in the ?rst entry 15 loaves are divided
by a baking ratio of 30 to obtain 1/2 oipe. In the
case of beer the number of jugs is divided by the
brewing ratio (another measure of dilution) to
determine the equivalent in oipe. Thus, the scribe
converted bread loaves, as well as beer, with di?er-
ing baking, or brewing, ratios into one common
denominator, rendering the entries inter-translat-
able via this money of account. At the end of this
?rst part several aggregations are made. Assorted
bread loaves are totalled (165), followed by cakes
(5) and jugs (30). Another aggregate of oipe is
reached by summing up the ?nal column of the list
across all types of bread and beer (entered as 3 + 7)
to give 10 oipe. The second part of the list merely
enumerates fowl, wine jars, baskets of incense and
bouquets and baskets of fresh ?owers. The overall
structure of the list, therefore, conveys a picture of
temporally and spatially ordered entries endowed
with the aura of numerical accuracy and organiza-
tion. It also underscores an economy of exchange
and restitution: plentiful o?erings to the gods in
return for their preservation of cosmic and worldly
order.
Other calendar lists, such as those of the Rames-
seum (Ramesses II) and Medinet Habu (Ramesses
III), involved signi?cantly larger amounts of food-
stu?s compared to the above. I now examine the
entries in Papyrus Harris I, whose contents are sim-
ilar to the calendar list engraved on the walls of the
Medinet Habu temple. This Papyrus was composed
shortly after the death of Ramesses III and covers
his full reign of 31 years. The inscription lists as ben-
e?ciaries of o?erings Amun (god of Thebes), Re
(god of Heliopolis), Ptah (god of Memphis), all
other gods and goddesses of Lower and Upper
Egypt and ‘every land’ (the remainder of the Egyp-
tian Empire). The contents cover the following types
of wealth/income: (1) god’s estate; (2) god’s income;
7
The hekat is a member of a family of capacity measures used
in ancient Egypt which included also the Khar, the oipe and the
hin. The Khar was 76.88 litres, the oipe one quarter of the Khar
(19.22 litres), and the hekat
1
=
4
of the oipe (4.8 l). The hin (0.48 l)
was 1/160 of the khar (see Janssen, 1975, pp. 108–111).
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 361
(3) o?erings to god; (4) grain for old feasts; (5) o?er-
ings for new feasts; and (6) o?erings to the Nile god.
O?erings to each god are demarcated in detail under
a separate section and the order of these sections
remains exactly the same throughout.
The earlier parts of the text begin with prayers
o?ered by Ramesses III to the gods, followed by
promises of di?erent o?erings written in a style sim-
ilar to that of the dedication texts, where amounts
are ‘‘without number” (Breasted, 1906/1988, part
four, p. 120), or ‘‘multiplied more than the sand”
(Breasted, 1906/1988, part four, p. 123), and when
numbers are mentioned, they are symbolic implying
plenitude ‘‘hundred thousand” (Breasted, 1906/
1988, part four, p. 114). By avoiding precise enu-
meration, o?erings are limitless and hence are su?-
ciently great to reciprocate with the gods’
willingness to underpin order.
The inscriptions go beyond dedication texts by
providing more detailed, and seemingly very precise,
lists of incomes and o?erings. The lists of god’s
estate typically count the numbers of individuals
attached to the estate along with other resources
such as cattle heads, gardens, lands, and workshops
and will not be discussed further. The other catego-
ries cover income, o?erings, and grain where monies
of account are used to re?ect the relative values of
items.
Table 2 below provides a list of the income stated
as a form of impost exacted from the population for
the bene?t of the Amun temples. The list then shows
di?erent items that can be divided into three ?ner
classi?cations. First, less bulky and more valuable
items (gold, silver, copper and yarn) valued in deben
(91 grams in weight) and kite (kidet, 1/10 of the
deben). Secondly, barley, which is both bulky and
of critical nutritional value, for which a capacity
measure, the khar (76.88 l) or 16-fold hekat (4.8 l),
is used as a money of account. Thirdly, remaining
items where simple counting of identities is used;
for example jars of wine, bundles of vegetables,
and heads of cattle. Thus, side-by-side, the income
list uses two di?erent types of money of account
(weight and capacity) as well as counting of objects.
Di?erent types of gold are di?erentiated by source,
valued in deben and kite, before all gold is totalled.
Silver is then listed and its value added to that of
gold. Copper is valued similarly but is not added
to the total of gold and silver, possibly because it
was deemed much less valuable. When similar items
are enumerated via counting, they are added
together, such as the boats made of cedar and
acacia.
Table 3 below records the Pharaoh’s gifts to
Amun. As usual, the list is preceded by a narrative
stating the kinds of goods given as a gift. The list
then shows the details of the individual types of
goods given, so that, for example, gold is di?erenti-
ated according to whether it is ?ne or white, and the
type of the gold product is also mentioned: ham-
Table 1
a
O?ering List: 5th standard feast of Osiris – 6th Day
Heading
109. [4th Akhet, x]: 6th day of the feast of Osiris; o?erings for Osiris and his conclave on the feast of this day
List
110 [bit bread BR30] Ratio per heqat, 1 Loaves 15 Making 1/2 oipe
111 [bit bread BR40] Ratio per heqat, 1 Loaves 15 Making 1/4 + 1/8 oipe
112 [bit bread BR60] Ratio per heqat, 1 Loaves 15 Making 1/4 oipe
113 [bit bread BR100] Ratio per heqat, 1 Loaves 25 Making 1/4 oipe
114 [psn bread BR5] Ratio per heqat, 1 Loaves 5 Making 1 oipe
115 [psn bread BR10] Ratio per heqat, 1 Loaves 20 Making 2 oipe
116 [good notched psn bread BR10] Ratio per heqat, 1 Loaves 5 Making 1/2 oipe
117 [psn ssrt bread BR20] Ratio per heqat, 1 Loaves 40 Making 2 oipe
118 [psn . . . bread BR10] Ratio per heqat, 1 Loaves 5 Making 1/2 oipe
119 [. . ... bread BR20] Ratio per heqat, 1 Loaves 5 Making 1/4 oipe
120 [white bread BR20] Ratio per heqat, 1 Loaves 5 Making 1/4 oipe
121 [bit cakes BR10] Ratio per heqat, 1 Loaves 5 Making 1/2 oipe
122 [white fruit bread BR80] Ratio per heqat, 1 Loaves 10 Making 1/8 oipe
123 [beer BR20] Ratio per heqat, 1 Jugs 30 Making 1 + 1/2 oipe
Summation
124 [Total, assorted loaves] for the sacred o?erings, 165 bit cakets, 5; beer, jugs, 30; making grain, 3 oipe related to (?) 7 oipe.
125 [Total? ordinary fowl 5 Wine, jars 1 Incense, baskets 5
126 [Total? . . ..], baskets 2 Fresh ?owers, bouquets 5 Fresh ?owers, baskets 5
a
Source: Kitchen (1996, pp. 336–337).
362 M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
mered work, ornaments, ?nger rings (raised work,
beaten work or inlay), vases, amulet cords, and
beads. Deben and kite, as monies of account, are
used to value the quantities of di?erent types of
gold, thereby bringing them all into additive
amounts of monies that can be totalled. Objects
made of other metals, in particular silver and
bronze, are treated similarly, using deben and kite,
and oils (myrrh) are also converted into deben, hekat
and hin. Linen, is enumerated through simple count-
ing of identi?ed and di?erentiated objects, and
incense, honey, butter, oil and fats, are enumerated
through counting numbers of jars (presumably of
similar sizes). Other goods, such as grapes and cin-
namon are quanti?ed by bunch or crate, ?bre by
number of ropes or loads, and salt and natron by
bricks. Thus, a combination of measures, each
deemed appropriate for a particular item, is used
to convert items into quantities or values.
Table 4 below shows a small part of the o?erings
made by Ramesses III containing only bread and
cakes (the remainder of the account documents
other goods ranging from cattle and fowl through
oils and herbs to wood). The key points to note
about the bread and cakes entries are that: (1) they
are listed by type and enumerated by number or
measure; and (2) because of knowledge of dilution
measures such as the baking ratio, the equivalent
amounts of bread and cakes o?ered are valued in
hekat. Hence, di?erent quantities of breads and
cakes are inter-translated via money of account
(the hekat) into one aggregate number, thereby
endowing the accounts with the order of a common
denominator.
Apart from the clear linkages between these lists,
they share several characteristics. First, Tables 3
and 4 state the period covered (31 years) and Table
2 lists the individuals responsible and their loca-
Table 2
a
Income of the temples of Amun
Pl. 12a
Things exacted, the impost of all people and serf-labourers of ‘‘The House (h t)-of-King-Usermare-Meriamon,-L.-P.-H.,-in-the-House-of-
Amon” (Medinet Habu temple), in the South and North under charge of the o?cials; the ‘‘House (pr)-of-Usermare-Meriamon-L.-P.
-H,-in-the-House-of-Amon” (small Karnak temple), in the (residence) city; the ‘‘House (pr)-of-Ramses-Ruler-of-Heliopolis,-L.-P.H.,
-in-the-House-of-Amon” (Luxor temple); the ‘‘House (h t)-of-Ramses-Ruler-of-Heliopolis,-L.-P.-H.,-Possessed-of-Joy-in-the-House-
of-Opet” (southern Karnak temple); the ‘‘House-of-Ramses-Ruler-of-Helipolis,-L.-P.-H.,-in-the-House-of-Khonsu” (Konsu-temple);
the ?ve herds made for this house, which King Usermare-Meriamon, L. P.H., the Great God, gave to their treasuries, storehouses and
granaries as their yearly dues:
Fine gold 217 deben 5 kidet
Gold of the mountain, of Coptos 61 deben 3 kidet
Gold of Kush 290 deben 8 1/2 kidet
Total, ?ne gold, and gold of the mountain 569 deben 6 1/2 kidet
Silver 10,964 deben 9 kidet
Total, gold and silver 11,546 deben 8 kidet
Copper 26,320 deben
Royal linen, mek-linen, ?ne southern linen, colored southern linen, various garments 3722
Yarn, deben 3795
Incense, honey, oil, various jars 1047
Pl. 12b
Shedeh and wine, various jars 25,405
Silver, being things of the impost of the people (rm-t) given for the divine o?erings 3606 deben I kidet
Barley
[-]
, of the impost of the peasants (yhwty), 16-fold heket 309,950
Vegetables, bundles 24,650
Flax bales 64,000
Bulls, bullocks of the bulls, heifers, calves, cows, cattle of
[À]
cattle of
[À]
of the herds of Egypt 847
Bulls, bullocks of the nege-bulls, heifers, calves, cows, being impost of the lands of Syria (H’-rw) 19
Total 866
Live geese of the exactions 744
Cedar: tow-boats and ferry boats 11
Acacia: tow-boats ‘canal’-boats, boats for transportation of cattle, warships, and kara-boats 71
Total, cedar and accacia: boats 82
Products of the Oasis in many lists for the divine o?erings
L.-P.-H.: May he live, be prosperous and happy.
a
Source: Breasted (1906/1988, part four, pp. 127–128).
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 363
Table 3
a
The Pharaoh’s gifts to Amun
Pl. 13a
Gold, silver, real lapis lazuli, real malachite, every real costly stone, copper, garments, jars, fowl, all the things which King Usermare-
Meriamon, L.P.H., the Great God, gave as gifts of the King L.P.H., in order to provision the house of his august fathers (sic!), Amon-
Re, King of gods, Mut and Khonsu, from the year 1 to the year 31, making 31 years.
Fine Ketem-gold; 42 ‘–’ (dmd-t), making 21 deben
Fine gold in ‘raised work’ 22 ?nger rings, making 3 ‘‘ 3 Kidet
Fine gold in inlay; 9 ?nger rings, making 1 ‘‘ 31/2 Kidet
Fine gold in ‘raised work’ and inlay of every real, costly stone, a ‘ring’ of the column of
Amon, making
22 ‘‘ 5 ‘‘
Fine gold in hammered work; a tablet, making 9 ‘‘ 51/2 ‘‘
Total, ?ne gold in ornaments 57 ‘‘ 5 ‘‘
Gold of two times, in ‘raised work’, and in inlay; 42 ?nger rings, making, 4 ‘‘ 51/2 ‘‘
Gold of two times; 2 vases 30 ‘‘ 5 ‘‘
Total, gold of two times 35 ‘‘ 1/2 ‘‘
White gold: 310 ?nger rings, making 16 ‘‘ 31/2 ‘‘
Pl. 13b
White gold, 264 beads, making 48 ‘‘ 4 ‘‘
White gold in beaten work: 108 ?nger rings for the god, making 19 ‘‘ 8 ‘‘
White gold: 155 amulet cords, making 6 ‘‘ 2 ‘‘
Total, white gold 90 ‘‘ 71/2 ‘‘
Total, ?ne gold of two times and white gold 183 ‘‘ 5 ‘‘
Silver: a vase (with) the rim of gold, in ‘raised work’, making 112 ‘‘ 5 ‘‘
Silver: a seive for the vase, making 12 ‘‘ 5 ‘‘
Silver: a sifting-vessel for the vase, making 27 ‘‘ 7 ‘‘
Silver: 4 vases, making 57 ‘‘ 41/2 ‘‘
Silver: 31 large panniers with lids, making 105 ‘‘ 4 ‘‘
Silver: 31 Caskets with lids, making 74 ‘‘ 4 ‘‘
Silver: 6 measuring-vases (
c
rk), making 30 ‘‘ 3 ‘‘
Silver: in hammered work, a tablet (
c
wl), making 19 ‘‘ 31/2 ‘‘
Silver in hammered work, 2 tablets (
c
nw), making 287 ‘‘ 1/2 ‘‘
Silver in scraps 100 ‘‘
Total, silver in vessels and scraps 827 ‘‘
Pl. 14a
Total gold and silver in vessels and scraps 1010 ‘‘ 61/4 ‘‘
Real lapis lazuli: 2 blocks, making 14 ‘‘ 1/2 ‘‘
Bronze,
c
in hammered work: 4 tablets (
c
nw), making 822 ‘‘
Myrrh: deben 51,140
Myrrh: heket 3
Myrrh: hin 20
Myrrh wood: logs 15
Myrrh fruit in measures (ypt) 100
Royal linen: garments (dw) 37
‘‘ ‘‘ upper garments (dw) 94
‘‘ ‘‘ hamen-garments (dw) 55
‘‘ ‘‘ mantles 11
‘‘ ‘‘ wrapping of Horus 2
‘‘ ‘‘
__d
garments 1
‘‘ ‘‘ garments (ydg’) 690
‘‘ ‘‘ tunics 489
‘‘ ‘‘ garments for the august ‘statue’ of Amon 4
PL 14b
Total, royal linen, various garments 1383
Mek-linen: a robe 1
Mek-linen, a mantle 1
‘‘ ‘‘ in a ‘cover’: a garment for the august ‘statue of Amon 1
Total, mek-linen: various garments 3
Fine southern linen: garments (dw) 2
(continued on next page)
364 M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
Table 3 (continued)
‘‘ ‘‘ ‘‘
__
garments 4
‘‘ ‘‘ ‘‘ upper garments (dw) 5
‘‘ ‘‘ ‘‘ garments (ydg’) 31
‘‘ ‘‘ ‘‘ tunics 29
‘‘ ‘‘ ‘‘ kilts 4
Total, ?ne southern linen, various garments 75
Colored linen: mantles 876
‘‘ ‘‘ tunics 6779
Total, colored linen, various garments 7125
Total, royal linen, mek-linen, ?ne southern linen, southern linen, coloured linen, various
garments
8586
Pl. 15a
White incense: (mn) jars 2159
White incense (mn) jars 12
Honey: (mn) jars 1065
Oil of Egypt: (mn) jars 2743
Oil of Syria (H’-rw): (m-s’-hy) jars 53
Oil of Syria (H’-rw): (mn) jars 1757
White fat: (mn) jars 911
Goose fat: (mn) jars 385
Butter: (mn) jars 20
Total, ?lled jars 9125
Shedeh: colored (mn) jars 1377
Shedeh: (k’bw) jars 1111
Wine: (mn) jars 20,078
Total, shedeh and wine jars (mn I k’bw) 22,556
Hirset (hrst) stone: sacred eye amulets 185
Lapis lazuli: scared eye amulets 217
Pl. 15b
Red jasper: scarabs 62
Malachite scarabs 224
Bronze and Minu (mynw) stone: scarabs 224
Lapis lazuli: scarabs 62
Various costly stones: sacred eye amulets 165
Various costly stones: seals as pendants 62
Rock crystal: seals 1550
Rock crystal: beads 155,000
Rock crystal cut: hin-jars 155
Wrought wood: seals 31
Alabaster: a block 1
Cedar bp’-ny-ny 6
Cedar tpt 1
Neybu (N’y-bw) wood: 3 logs, making (deben) 610
Cassia wood: 1 log, making (deben) 800
Reeds: bundles 17
Pl.16a
Cinnamon: measures (msty) 246
Cinnamon: bundles 82
Grapes: measures (msty) 52
Rosemary (nkp’ty): measures (msty) 125
Yu?ti (Yw-fy-ty)-plant: measures (msty) 101
Dom-palm fruit of Mehay (M-h’-yw): measures (msty) 26
Fruit: heket 46
Grapes: crates 1809
Grapes: bunches 1869
Pomegranates: crates 375
B’-k’-y’ plant, in measures (yp’t) 1668
Various cattle 297
(continued on next page)
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 365
tions, thereby the o?erings are embedded tempo-
rally and spatially. Secondly, the entries are
arranged under designated sections in an order that
is adhered to throughout. Thirdly, di?erent mea-
sures are consistently assigned to di?erent items.
Monies of account, e.g. deben, or khar, are clearly
di?erentiated from each other via di?erent entries.
Fourthly, totals used throughout endow the
accounts with an aura of internal coherence, bal-
ance and accuracy. Fifthly, a precise system of
inter-translatability underpins all the di?erent mon-
ies of account used, so that entries using one money
of account could be translated into another, thereby
ensuring that items are additive, and creating an
aura of order, precision and transparency. Sixthly,
these quanti?cation and valuation techniques have
symbolic signi?cance beyond merely equating di?er-
ent items; they visualize the magnitude of the reci-
procal o?erings made by the Pharaoh to the gods
and his observing of Maat in the quest for securing
order.
Because calendar o?ering-lists were also recorded
on the outside walls of temples, they tended to focus
upon totals rather than individual items/objects; for
example they state types and amounts of animals
rather than naming and counting parts of animals.
They focused upon resources pledged for the tem-
ple, and this explains why some commentators, such
as Haring (1997, p. 61), see them as re?ecting
administrative ‘reality’. The inscriptions on these
calendar o?ering-lists have varied over time,
prompting Haring to surmise that this may have
been in response to accounting and administrative
demands. The ritual o?ering-lists were located in
Table 3 (continued)
Live geese 2940
Live turpu (Tw-r-pw) geese 5200
Live water-fowl 126,300
Pl. 16b
Fat geese from the ?ocks 20
Natron: bricks 44,000
Salt: bricks 44,000
Palm-?ber: ropes 180
Palm-?ber: loads 50
Palm-?ber: ‘À’ 77
Palm-?ber: cords 2
Sebkhet (sbh’t) plants 60
Flax (ps’t) bekhen (bhn) 1150
Ideninu (Ydnynyw) 60
Hezet (hd’t) plant: measures (msty) 50
Pure ‘À’, deben 750
a
Source: Breasted (1906/1988, part four, pp. 128–133).
Table 4
a
O?erings founded by Ramses III
‘‘Books of the Nile-god,” which King Usermare-Meriamon L.P.H., the Great God, founded 48 years, making 31 years;
Books of the Nile-God”, making:
Fine bread of the divine o?erings: various loaves (by’t) 470,000
Fine bread of the divine o?erings: person (pr-sn) loaves, white loaves, and seshu (ssw) loaves 879,224
Cakes: various measures (yp t) 106,910
Kunek (kwnk) bread: loaves (wdnw-nt) 46,568
Beer: various jars 49,432
Making
Clean grain: 16-fold heket 61,1721/2
Bulls 291
Bullocks of the bulls 291
Pl. 38a
Calves 51
Cows 2564
Total 2923
a
Source: Breasted (1906/1988, part four, p. 157).
366 M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
the inner rooms or private tombs within the temple
enclosure, and they were concerned with detailed
items (e.g. di?erent parts of an ox rather than the
whole ox). Entries on ritual o?ering-lists do not con-
tain any of the items mentioned in the calendar
o?ering-lists, but the reverse is true. Haring (ibid,
p. 58) has suggested that it is justi?able to regard
‘‘the o?ering-lists on the outside of the temples as
the administrative ‘translations’ of the o?ering-cults
going on inside, being copies on stone of papyrus
documents that may with good reason be called ‘rit-
ual’, but which incontestably have administrative
aspects as well.” Haring reads ‘rational’ administra-
tive intent in these texts, but given that they were
inscribed once and for all, which renders them
in?exible to variations in context that may demand
frequent ?ne-tuning by the administration, a less
‘rational’ reading may be closer to the mark. This
paper is concerned to ask: Why such obsession with
detailed accounting entries of godly o?erings? Why
were these texts recorded on the outside walls of
temples, on public display, rather than simply being
inscribed on papyri? These questions are explored
below with the view that order has much to o?er
in addressing them.
Pictures, words, accounting numbers and order
‘‘A place is nothing: not even a space, unless at its
heart – a ?gure stands.” (Paul Dirac, 1958, cited
in Barrow, 2000, p. 51)
Pictorial scenes engraved on the walls of temples
and tombs, frequently supported by linguistic and
numerical texts, were part of the rituals that cele-
brated festival o?erings. These scenes frequently
replicated the contents of o?ering lists, though not
in the same detail. Examples include the temples
of Medinet Habu, Abydos, and Luxor.
8
The proces-
sion shows individuals carrying various items, such
as grain, ?our, foodstu?s (bread, cakes, sweets,
fruits), beer, gold, and oxen. Bread loaves are di?er-
entiated pictorially by shape into bit bread, psn
bread, white bread, etc. with supportive inscriptions
indicating the baking ratio as well as their speci?c
sources of supply (Haring, 1997, p. 109). Beer is dif-
ferentiated by type of jar and brewing ratio (for
example 4 & 8, and 5 & 10; the latter ?gure of every
pair being the exact double of the former, see Har-
ing, 1997, p. 113). Incense is measured in deben.
Gold is di?erentiated by source (e.g., gold of water;
gold of the desert), with amounts in the order of
1000 deben, leading Haring (Haring, 1997, p. 133)
to suggest that these round ?gures ‘‘clearly have a
?ctive character”.
Representations of o?erings typically state that
they are of a ?xed allocation; for example daily
o?erings are supported by the inscription ‘‘the
divine o?ering of the ?xed portion of every day”
(Haring, 1997, p. 112). The scale of each scene is
large, sometimes measuring 25 m across, with each
scene being proportionate to the size of the temple
to which it relates. The procession of o?erings is
led by a high ranking priest burning incense, and
the scribe of divine o?erings. The presence of the
scribes and priests endows the scenes with order
and legitimacy, bringing accounting and divinity
into an immediate symbiosis. There is more to the
role of the scribe than what seemingly resembles a
static representation. The scribe of divine o?erings
is shown receiving the carriers of o?erings at the
doorway of the temple. Another temple scribe urges
the carriers of meat to: ‘‘Hurry up! [take] the meat-
portions to the temple, which is open(?). Come and
carry out [your] tasks” (Haring, 1997, p. 126).
Responsibility for receiving and monitoring o?er-
ings is divided, so that the scribe of the temple deals
with meat only whereas the scribe of divine o?erings
deals with the remainder of the o?erings. The ‘scribe
of the god’s sealed things’, attached to the temple
treasury (Haring, 1997, p. 127), weighs gold, pre-
cious stones and incense delivered to the temple,
accompanied by the following inscriptions (Haring,
1997, p. 136):
‘‘(Ineni) inspecting the [silver] and gold [. . .] tur-
quoise [. . .] incense of the monthly requirement
[. . .] for the Ennead [. . .] d’m gold [. . .] by the
overseer of the treasury. . .] Ipet[sut. . .] of Amun
[. . .]
(Puyemre) [counting/weighing?] incense for the
temples. . . which are in the retinue of the House
of Amun, in the treasury of the temple.”
These pictorial representations, supported by
inscriptions, o?er a rich tapestry of scribal involve-
ment in the ritual of o?erings, and the process
entailed in receiving, weighing, and counting them.
The scenes construct a ‘reality’ of an organized
8
Unfortunately, the scenes have been damaged in many parts
rendering their reproduction here problematical.
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 367
and orderly process in imitation of cosmic order,
endowing it with religious and administrative
legitimacy.
The combining of words, numbers and pictorial
scenes was a widespread practice in the funerary rit-
uals of ancient Egypt, as shown in Fig. 4. The ?gure
is made up of three registers. The left register shows
Neferriabet seated before an o?ering table loaded
with di?erent types of foodstu?s, and three num-
bers, each of 1000, at the bottom below the head
of a gazelle and a bird. The upper middle register
is an inscription of the names of the gods to whom
the o?erings are made and the name of Neferriabet,
her good deeds in life, and a prayer that she may be
justi?ed on the Day of Judgement. The right register
is a numeric account of the various o?erings, rang-
ing in numbers from less than ten through hundreds
to thousands. What could such a combination of
di?erent forms of representation achieve that a sin-
gle form of representation could not?
These three modes of representation are not in a
relation of complete replication of each other. For
example, Davis (1992, p. 240) warns against ‘‘treat-
ing the pictorial text as merely a re-production or
illustration of that other text”, and Bryan (1996)
refers to the disjunction of (written) text and (picto-
rial) image in Egyptian art. The meanings that dif-
ferent modes of representation engender occur not
only because the author may intend to use them
to signal di?erent things, nor only because we as
readers may read them di?erently. Also, these
modes di?er in their accessibility to the audience
and in their representational capacities. In ancient
Egypt, most people could not read words and num-
bers, but were likely able to read some meaning in a
pictorial representation, even though they may
interpret it di?erently.
9
Further, for structural sem-
iologists (e.g. Barthes, 1977), written (or numerical)
texts can be treated as discrete texts where separate
signs (words, numbers) can be identi?ed. In con-
trast, individual signs are not capable of being sin-
gled out in pictorial representations, so a ?gure
cannot be detached from its context as the same
brushstroke establishes simultaneously the ?gure
and part of its background, thus the whole scene
is read as a single sign. Others (e.g. Elgin, 1983)
Fig. 4. O?ering scene from the tomb of Neferriabet.
9
Baines (1983, p. 584) has suggested that in ancient Egypt ‘‘in
most periods not more than one percent of the population were
literate.”
368 M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
have noted that pictorial representations are gener-
ally far more dense compared to words or numbers.
A small alteration in a pictorial representation e?ec-
tively annuls it and creates another. In contrast,
words and numbers are less restrictive; for example
A, a, a, would all be taken to signify the same letter
of the alphabet.
In seeking to understand the dialectics, or inter-
textuality (Loperieno, 1996; Weinsheimer, 1991),
between pictorial, linguistic, and numerical signs
it is important to note the context within which
these modes of representation are employed. Egyp-
tian hieroglyphs were assumed to be endowed with
magical qualities both as written texts and artistic
representations. Objects or individuals were repre-
sented in the form of hieroglyphic signs to convey
symbolic messages. As Wilkinson (1994, p. 152)
notes: ‘‘The embedded or ‘encoded’ hieroglyphic
forms also frequently interact to some degree with
the texts or inscriptions with which they are associ-
ated, for the use of hieroglyphic form in Egyptian
art rarely occurs in complete isolation from the
written word.” In this context, ‘‘‘picture’ and
‘hieroglyph’ often work(ing) together to constitute
the ‘image’” (Davis, 1992, p. 4). These comments
give rise to four implications concerning order
and accounting.
First, pictures could be ‘read’ by the Pharaoh’s
illiterate subjects who could not decipher linguistic
texts or accounting numbers. Di?erent modes of
representation may give rise to di?erent readings:
‘‘art may provide a di?erent version of the same
subject expressed in accompanying text” (Bryan,
1996, p. 164). Yet, the combining of pictures and
inscriptions into one representation generates ?uid-
ity and a mutual determination between the text and
the illustration (Assmann, 1994). The combination
of the pictures of o?erings and accounting inscrip-
tions yields a more complex re-presentation than
would be the case if only one form of representation
was used. These di?erent modes of re-presentation,
combined as an integral whole, collectively invested
o?erings with order. While accounting numbers
endowed o?erings with precision, via the use of
numbers and values, designation of space and time,
and naming of objects and individuals, the written
text and pictorial scene formed the context.
Together, these representation were monumental
performative rituals of the rendering of an account
of o?erings that underpinned kingship, the up-keep-
ing of Maat, and the preservation of cosmic and
worldly order by keeping the gods satis?ed.
Secondly, the use of accounting numbers in artis-
tic representations (e.g., number of beer jugs) can be
linked to the symbolic nature of numbers and their
connection to order. The Rhind Mathematical
Papyrus, dating to the 12th dynasty (1985–1773
BC), presents itself thus: ‘‘Accurate reckoning [or
Rules for reckoning] for inquiring into things, and
the knowledge of all things, mysteries. . .all secrets”
(Clagett, 1999, p. 122). Accurate reckoning was
thus construed as the gateway to knowledge of all
things; a knowledge that imposes order on myster-
ies and secrets by revealing them and rendering
them knowable. The use of numbers in Egyptian
temple inscriptions and scenes was an integral part
of an assemblage of rituals that sought to underpin
orderly equilibrium. Wilkinson (1994, p. 126)
argues that in ancient Egypt: ‘‘the relationships
between the abstract numbers found in myth and
in nature were. . .seen as meaningful patterns re?ect-
ing divine planning and cosmic harmony”, further
rea?rmed and reinforced by accounting inscrip-
tions that ordered all kinds of sacred and worldly
activities.
Thirdly, of all items of foodstu?s, why was
accounting for bread accorded so much detail, dif-
ferentiating it by type and precise baking ratios?
Bread symbolized life-giving power, and the ankh,
the key of life, was frequently represented artisti-
cally in the form of an o?ering table loaded with
bread loaves (Wilkinson, 1994, pp. 160–169). Fur-
ther, the most common values of the baking ratios
were 4 and 5 and their multiples, with the symbolic
meaning of totality and completeness accorded to
these numbers by the ancient Egyptians (Wilkin-
son, 1994, pp. 133–138). Perhaps it is stretching
things too far to single out bread for a special sig-
ni?cance in o?erings seeking to a?rm order, since
all food may carry equal signi?cation. Shafer
(1998, p. 25) has argued that ‘‘ there must have
been religious as well as socioeconomic meaning
to partaking of god’s food, particularly since the
food symbolized life, order, the self of god, and
the selves of the donor and o?ciant. Those Egyp-
tians sharing in the food must have experienced a
sense of privileged communion with god and king
that shaped their ritualised bodies and enhanced
their feelings of unity, e?cacy and power.” While
provisions of all kinds of foodstu?s had such a
symbolic link to order, bread in particular had a
special signi?cance: serious shortages in bread sup-
plies would have threatened the survival of the
populace, with the possible consequence of civil
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 369
and political disorder.
10
Any destabilizing of
worldly order was understood to be disruptive of
cosmic order.
Fourthly, the ritual of inscribing o?erings,
whether numeric, textual, or artistic, was performa-
tive in two senses. The inscriptions represented evi-
dence of the action of making o?erings to the gods
by the Pharaoh. Moreover, the inscriptions in them-
selves are records of the o?erings that served to
instil a measure of recurrence and endurance of
o?erings. Both these arguments directly connect
with the preservation of order. The action of mak-
ing the o?erings was an exercise in which the Pha-
raoh discharged accountability to the gods in the
spirit of observing Maat. The act of inscription
invested the o?erings with qualities not possible in
purely oral societies (Goody, 1986, 1987; Ong,
1982). Compared to oral records, not only does
the act of inscription produce a relatively permanent
record (Assmann, 2006), nor does it only signal the
potential of a much greater mobility of what has
been inscribed, but also it is an exercise in power
relations. In ancient Egypt, inscriptions were a man-
ifestation and an e?ect of power relations in which
the Pharaoh, his senior subordinates, the high
priests, and the scribes loomed large. As Foucault
(1974) has remarked, writing is a systematic conver-
sion of the power relations between controller (e.g.
the Pharaoh) and the controlled (e.g. the populace),
and Nietzsche (1930) has argued that inscribed texts
are fundamental ‘facts’ of power.
Discussion: accounting and order
The historical material analyzed above is distinc-
tive. First, most of the inscriptions were recorded at
one point in time, in the case of Ramesses III after
his death, yet covering all the years of his reign,
exhibiting the attributes of a completed text
intended to last for perpetuity. It could be argued
that these are summary records which must have
been drawn from more detailed, regular accounts
kept for functional purposes. While this may be
the case, a functionalist interpretation does not fully
explain why such summary accounts were inscribed
after the death of the Pharaoh and on both stone
and papyrus. Secondly, many of the entries deal
with aggregate annual amounts of expected theoret-
ical deliveries of goods and resources, without cor-
responding entries showing actual deliveries and
discrepancies (balances), rendering them on their
own insu?cient for control purposes. Thirdly, the
papyri containing the accounts were intended for
burial in the tomb of the Pharaoh thereby suggest-
ing that it is unlikely that they were inscribed for
monitoring and control purposes.
The diverse nature and accounting content of the
inscriptions analyzed above gives rise to important
questions. For whose bene?t (humans; gods) were
these inscriptions intended, given the low level of lit-
eracy in ancient Egypt? What roles did these
accounting inscriptions play in constructing and
underpinning order? If the main purpose of
accounting inscriptions in temples was ritualistic,
why did they take a precise format, with units either
enumerated through counting of identities or valued
via a ‘money of account’? How was accounting
implicated in the diverse activities of the temples,
and in the conceptualization of the temple as the
loci of ordered, secular and sacred time and space?
What is it about accounting that renders it amena-
ble for use by interested agency to construct a real-
ity of cosmic and worldly order? What insights can
be gleaned from the evidence that have import for
the theorizing of accounting? Any meaningful
attempt to address these questions, this paper
argues, is inextricably intertwined with the problem
of order. To mark this emphasis, the following dis-
cussion is organized under four headings that exam-
ine the links between accounting, order, time, and
space, and explores some implications for the theo-
rizing of accounting.
Accounting, order and time
A document from the reign of Sesostris I, Middle
Kingdom, makes an explicit connection between the
provision of o?erings and orderly sacred time by
emphasizing the dimensions of neheh and djet (Ass-
mann, 2002, pp. 60–61):
‘‘I have come as Horus. . .
to establish the o?ering cakes of the gods,
to accomplish the building works in the temple of
my father Atum,
10
It is instructive to note that even in recent times, bread
continues to have special signi?cance in Egypt. Bread prices have
not increased signi?cantly over several decades (in contrast to
other foodstu?s). When President Sadat’s government put bread
prices up in the 1970s, massive, violent riots ?ared up because this
was taken by the masses as a threat to their survival and, as a
consequence, the government was forced to back-down. For
ancient and contemporary Egyptians alike, bread always signi?es
life-giving power.
370 M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
to make him rich even to the degree that he had
made me take rule,
to provide his altars with food on earth.
. . .
Neheh-eternity it means, to create the salvational.
A king who is named for his work does not die,
. . .
The things of djet-eternity do not die
By making o?erings to the gods, Pharaohs
sought to immortalise themselves, satisfy the gods
and maintain order. Accounting inscriptions pro-
vided an indelible record of these achievements;
?rst, by assembling items together, that is by acting
as a store (Assmann, 2006) and second, by placing a
relative valuation, through the use of monies of
account, that rendered precisely dated o?erings in
their great ‘value’ visible to all. Accounting endowed
the deeds of the Pharaohs with salvational and eter-
nal qualities that were crucial parts of order in
Egypt, and acted as the media through which these
deeds were re-presented.
The material examined here testi?es to a strong
relationship between accounting for o?erings and
sacred time as neheh (cyclical time) and djet (perma-
nent, suspended time). Neheh was re?ected in the
periodicity of accounting entries, with the cyclical
recurrence of days of the week, weeks of the month,
months of the year and the years covering the dura-
tion of every royal reign. The o?ering lists and cal-
endars of feasts are examples of neheh as regularly
recurring, cyclical time, where the motion of time
is captured and given concrete meaning by account-
ing entries that were designated by precise calendar
dates (see top of Tables 1 and 3). These accounting
entries established an expectation of periodically
recurring o?erings, thereby underscoring restitution
with the gods, and cosmic and worldly order (e.g.
Table 2 referring to ‘yearly dues’). These entries
underpinned Maat and order as recurrence or repe-
tition that helped to institutionalize the conduct of
public o?erings (Buttler, 1993; Buttler, 1998).
The recurrence and magnitude of o?erings to the
gods were part of a reciprocal relationship that
underscored the divine nature of the Pharaoh, by
giving back to god something (e.g. foods) in return
for what god gave the Pharaoh (kingship) and
Egypt (stability and order); a kind of moral calculus
of recurring (neheh) obligations and entitlement
(Maltby, 1997), or provident nature’s balance sheet
suggested by Goethe, that every Pharaoh was to
observe permanently (djet). This reciprocity, in
terms of receiving and giving, was also an expres-
sion of Maat and the divinity of the Pharaoh:
[God = Maat; Pharaoh = accounting for o?erings;
accounting for o?erings = Maat; God = Pharaoh].
Such o?erings were an instance of a discharge of
accountability by the Pharaoh as underpinned by
Maat, as a quintessential expression of a concept
of accountability that transcended the three realms
of the ancient Egyptian world. By rendering an
account of kingly o?erings to the gods, self and sub-
jects, Pharaoh and Maat were linked and merged
into a common identity fusing into one coherent
and integrated whole, rendering the temples, with
their accounting inscriptions, both a material and
a spiritual memorial to the Pharaoh (Leblanc,
1997). Accounting entries underpinned Maat by
quantifying, measuring and rendering visible ‘valu-
able’ o?erings to the gods.
The cult of the ‘dead’ Pharaoh was celebrated in
honor of his living image, and perpetuated long
after his death, combining both notions of sacred
time, djet and neheh:
‘‘His [the Pharaoh’s] terrestrial entity would be
fused in Osiris (=the royal tomb), his celestial
hypostasis would be absorbed by Re into the cos-
mos (=the temple of the royal cult): he would be
‘Osiris when he reposes in Re–Re when he
reposes in Osiris’, that is to say Osiris–Re, or
djt-nhh, the two uni?ed principles of Eternity
and Divine Unity.” (Leblanc, 1997, p. 55)
This transformation which rendered the ‘dead’
Pharaoh at once Osiris–Re e?ectively combined
the two qualities of sacred time, djet (Re)-neheh
(Osiris), bringing together the two concepts of Eter-
nity and Divine Unity. Such transformation was
contingent upon demonstrating that the ‘dead’ Pha-
raoh had observed Maat, discharged his account-
ability appropriately as evidenced by him
rendering an account via accounting inscriptions,
of regularly recurring o?erings and gifts of ‘accept-
able’ enumeration and value.
In commenting on the signi?cance of the calen-
dar, Assmann (2002, p. 72, original emphases)
observes:
‘‘The ritual calendar was not just a representa-
tion of the cosmos, but a cultural form that sta-
bilized the cosmos it represented. The motive
for repetition was . . . the conviction that the
cyclical stability of the cosmos is constantly in
jeopardy and has to be sustained by ritual repeti-
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 371
tion. The ritual institutionalization of perma-
nence thus has a cosmic signi?cance: it generates
cultural order with a view of sustaining cosmic
order; memoria is raised to the rank of cosmog-
ony. The world is commemorated in order to
counterbalance the perpetual drift toward
decline, inertia, entropy, and chaos.”
This quote applies to accounting inscriptions
with equal force. The repetition of accounting
entries in a cyclical periodicity engendered a cultural
order that underpinned the concept of neheh time as
circular and recurring, ensuring the perpetuation of
cosmic order. This accounting-inspired order acted
as a counterbalance to the destructive forces of dis-
order so that the cyclical continuity of the cosmos
could be sustained. Whilst re?ecting cyclical time,
periodicity and recurrence (neheh), accounting
simultaneously underpinned the suspended,
unchanging concept of time (djet). By emphasizing
recurrence, the repetition of the ?ow of o?erings
and gifts from the Pharaohs to the gods on a regular
basis (e.g. ‘yearly dues’, Table 2), accounting
inscriptions underpinned the endurance, Everness,
and perfectivity of annual o?erings in measured
amounts/values expected for perpetuity as an
unchanging permanence. At the same time every
month, year or festival, accounting entries, at times
supported by written and pictorial scenes, rendered
visible for all to see the regular recurrence of o?er-
ings as if nothing ever changes. This cyclical conti-
nuity reinforced the continuity of time itself, and
constructed a reality of a world in which all that
was expected was both a re?ection of the past,
and a continuation into the present and future pro-
jected into Eternity (djet).
Accounting performed two complementary roles
in the temples. First, as a set of performative rituals,
it bonded the human world in its daily routine with
the sacred circularity of cosmic life. By bringing the
two realms together, accounting entries recording
the recurring ritual of o?erings secured regeneration
as a form of ‘First Time’, and with it continuity of
life after death. Secondly, by visualizing restitution
and reciprocity via accounting for o?erings,
accounting served to sustain cosmic circularity and
continuity.
Accounting, order and space
The three realms of the ancient Egyptian world,
the cosmos, earth, and netherworld, converged into
the sacred space of the temple and cohered in temple
rituals (Shafer, 1998). Accounting functioned as a
performative ritual in temple space by rendering
such convergence and coherence possible. The inner
temple was the sacred space of permanence (djet),
and accounting inscriptions were super-imposed
upon this space, providing a ritualized coherence
to o?erings and other temple activities by valuing
and inscribing them. The ceiling of the inner temple
was modelled on the cosmos, being populated with
stars (Wilkinson, 1994) as an architectural state-
ment that underscored the reverence and standing
of this religious institution as well as its practitio-
ners, the priests. Macdonald (1989) has noted in
the context of contemporary UK professions (e.g.,
accountancy) how these professions’ desire for
achieving respectability and social status has led
them to erect very impressive, ostentatiously ornate,
imposing buildings in the most expensive locations.
While care should be excercized in extending this
argument fully to the ancient world, linking the
quality of temples to the desire to endow religion
and priests with social status and respectability
has certain attractions. Social status was enhanced
further through the engraving of accounting inscrip-
tions of o?erings on temple walls that served as a
powerful reminder of the connection between o?er-
ings and cosmic order. The regularity emphasized
via accounting inscriptions of o?erings visualized
and underpinned the stability of o?erings over time,
and underscored the notion of djet as unchanging
permanence. It was also in this sacred space that
the Pharaoh demonstrated through the entries of
o?erings, as a rendering of moral accountability
entailing restitution and reciprocity, an orderly link
between his subjects and the gods so that the dead
may be granted safe passage through the nether-
world. This was reinforced through the periodicity
of accounting inscriptions, as performative rituals,
recording annual o?erings, so that the bene?t of safe
passage could extend to all those that joined the
netherworld since the previous o?erings.
The secular space of the temple was the location
of worship, cult preservation, building work and
administrative duties. The administration of such
social space through accounting served to condition
the meaning of order and rendered space knowable
and relevant (Bauman, 1993). The intervention of
accounting rituals imposed a measure of order on
a variety of activities: tasks assigned to individuals
were carefully noted, work targets were set and reg-
ular reporting on their achievements compared to
372 M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
targets took place as part of the ritual of daily scri-
bal activities (Ezzamel, 2005). Such accounting
intervention into the distinctive, yet intertwined,
sacred and secular spaces of the temple provided a
measure of coherence and organization in daily life
constructed in the image of cosmic order.
The outside walls of the temple served as a writ-
ing surface for accounting inscriptions, written texts
and pictorial scenes of o?erings as a visual reminder
of the Pharaoh rendering an account to the gods.
These inscriptions, as inscriptions of the god Thoth,
stood then, as they still stand today, as evidence of
rendering a kingly account underscored by Maat,
and also served to inculcate the Pharaoh’s subjects
with the importance of observing Maat in every
walk of life. This remarkable celebration of the Pha-
raoh discharging his accountability served as a clear
reminder that accounting inscriptions of valuable
and regular o?erings were an orchestrated set of rit-
uals intended to create a reality in which order
reigned supreme, underscoring the naturalization
of the power of the Pharaoh as a sovereign and a
divine ruler on earth.
The dialectic between accounting inscriptions
and the monumental architecture of temples had a
powerful impact on engendering order. Assmann
(2002, p. 63) notes the special connection between
hieroglyphs and stone surface in Egypt:
‘‘hieroglyphic writing is writing on stone. It was
designed for the inscription of monuments, just
as monuments were designed to be inscribed with
hieroglyphs. In Egypt, stone structures and
inscription – building and language – achieve a
unique connection, constituting a ‘monumental
discourse’ that re?ects an unprecedented attempt
to construct sacred time.”
Through the inscribing of accounting entries
upon the inside and outside walls of the temples,
accounting discourse became intertwined with this
architectural discourse. Temple space was rendered
malleable to accounting inscriptions detailing o?er-
ings to the gods. Accounting discourse colonized
both the interior and exterior of the temple: the
worldly activities conducted within were under-
pinned by accounting-inspired measure-for-measure
restitution and reciprocity, and the outside walls
were covered by the entries of gifts and o?erings.
The resulting combination, a monumental discourse
of architecture and accounting endowed with seem-
ingly precise calculation, produced a stunning visual
evidence of how the Pharaohs attended to the gods,
discharged accountability, observed Maat and sus-
tained cosmic and worldly order.
The union of accounting inscription as a perfor-
mative ritual and the seeming permanence of temple
architecture brought together sacred time and
sacred space and underwrote each other’s ability
to promote order and harmony for eternity. With
accounting entries of o?erings functioning as per-
formative rites and rituals, they emphasized and
reinforced conceptions of time as recurrence, neheh,
(e.g. ‘yearly dues’, Table 2) and permanence, djet,
(e.g. ‘provision for the house of [the pharaoh’s]
august father [god], Table 3):
‘‘Neheh, the generic term for all regularly recur-
ring units of time is cyclical; it is formed and kept
in motion by the rites. Djet, the unchanging per-
manence of that which has achieved perfection, is
mirrored in the sacred spatial dimension of per-
manence constructed through the medium of
monumental discourse.” (Assmann, 2002, p. 73)
Accounting technology and order
‘‘when the ordering of the universe was set about,
God ?rst began by laying out by ?gure and num-
ber the patterns of ?re and water and earth and
air” (Plato, 1929, Timaeus, 53b).
From its earliest genesis in ancient Egypt,
accounting had several technical and linguistic attri-
butes that render it a suitable ritual for the construc-
tion and preservation of order (Ezzamel, 1994;
Ezzamel, 2005). First, it had a highly structured
and rule-bound numbering system that was
exploited by the scribes to enumerate objects and
construct values, through the use of monies of
account, in an orderly manner (Ezzamel & Hoskin,
2002). As Porter (1995, p. xi) has noted, numbers
and systems of quanti?cation can be powerful in
supplanting human judgement by quantitative rules
that instil a sense of impersonal order. Secondly, in
ancient Egypt accounting had a speci?c, technical,
noun-dominated vocabulary (e.g., revenues, expen-
ditures, receipts, remainders) that made possible
the preparation of accounts in a tabular format.
This format also in?uenced the written and spoken
ancient Egyptian language. According to Baines
(1983, p. 575), in ancient Egypt ‘‘The in?uence of
accounting on written language is so great that it
ostensibly penetrates even the spoken form, produc-
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 373
ing constructions that depended on tables rather
than on conventional grammar. . .For nearly half a
millennium there is no evidence that continuous
texts were written.”
11
Thirdly, accounting numbers
and values were one means by which order was
imposed on the ancient Egyptian universe. These
numbers and values were related to speci?c times
and spaces, laying out, as Plato intimated in allud-
ing to God’s work, by ?gure and number the pat-
terns of their world, acting as ancient temporal
and spatial ordering devices. Fourthly, accounting
entries combined numerical and linguistic signs that
were organized into formats such as the grid struc-
ture, with their visibility enhanced further through
the use of a carefully organized classi?cation system
of items and di?erent ink colours to distinguish dif-
ferent types of entry (Ezzamel, 2005). The use of
aggregations (sub-totals, totals, grand totals),
expected theoretical deliveries, actual deliveries,
and balances outstanding created an aura of accu-
racy, transparency, and balance; an ordered schema
in the image of the cosmos extended into the
worldly sphere. Fifthly, ancient Egyptian accounts
named individuals charged with responsibility for
speci?c entries, making it possible for individuals
to comprehend their role in achieving expected soci-
etal norms (of honesty, transparency, collective
achievement), while satisfying their desire to incul-
cate a sense of individual achievement and account-
ability (Ezzamel, 2002b; Ezzamel, 2005; Roberts,
1991).
Emphasizing these technical qualities of account-
ing is not intended to signal a rei?cation of the
accounting craft, rather to indicate the scope for
its practitioners to deploy them in ways intended
to serve particular interests. Equipped with these
technologies, ancient Egyptian accounting had the
capacity to function as a means of creating and sus-
taining order. Accounting was an integral part of
the cosmic and worldly spheres, a technology that
through its emphasis on equity of debits and credits,
an orderly aggregation system, and the use of a
seemingly neutral, noun-dominated terminology
was the operational counterpart of Maat as order.
As a performative ritual, accounting functioned as
an instrument of power that helped to legitimize
social order and construct it in the image of cosmic
order (see Dumont, 1972 on rituals as means of
legitimizing order).
At the genesis of ancient Egyptian history,
accounting was part of a primordial world as evi-
dent in it being the ?rst form of hieroglyphic inscrip-
tion as divine writing (Davies & Friedman, 1998), its
restitutive role in the myths of Osiris, Horus, and
the Day of Judgement, and the symbolic role of
Thoth as god of record keeping. Accounting func-
tioned as a mediating institution between gods and
humans. While inscribing accounts of o?erings on
external temple walls may have been intended to
impress the Pharaoh’s subjects and successors, this
has to be quali?ed because of the low level of liter-
acy in ancient Egypt. It is possible that these inscrip-
tions were intended for the gods, so that the
Pharaoh could demonstrate how his accountability
was discharged through o?erings, and how order
and Maat were observed on earth. O?erings were
the means by which the cycle of reciprocity between
humans and gods was squared, given in return for
the gods protecting Egypt so that order may prevail
for eternity, a reciprocity made visible by rendering
accounts of the o?erings.
While no precise numerical equivalence or ‘mea-
sure-for-measure’ reciprocity has been established in
the provision of o?erings, the assumption was that
the more the Pharaoh gave, the more satis?ed the
gods were, the more they were expected to preserve
cosmic and worldly order. The enumeration by
quantity and valuation via monies of account made
it possible for the value and plenitude of o?erings to
be calculated and visualized. Accounting inscrip-
tions provided an indelible, relatively permanent
record of o?erings for all to see, gods and humans
alike. Thus, rather than presenting accounting roles
as a form of unwanted, profane intervention in what
is otherwise the sacred and divine domain of reli-
gion (Laughlin, 1988), this paper argues that
accounting can be part of the divine and sacred
assemblage. This understanding is complemented
by the secular, more familiar roles of accounting
‘in this world’ which is at once di?erentiated from
but intertwined with the sacred. For the Egyptians,
society also rested on the preservation of important
values, underscored by Maat, which on earth meant
justice and order for all. In the realm of society,
accounting played several important roles. It pro-
vided the basis on which a form of order within
11
Baines (1983, p. 575) referring to an ancient Egyptian story,
states: ‘‘In the Egyptian story of the Two Brothers (c. 1200 BC) a
handsome cowherd, asked by the evil woman who wishes to
seduce him how much he is carrying, replies, ‘Emmer: 3 sacks;
Barley: 2 sacks; Total: 5’. . . People may not really come to talk
like this, but the in?uence of tabular presentation on written
material involving numbers is profound.”
374 M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
state institutions could be maintained, as the scribes
were able to set performance targets, organize work,
report, monitor and control activities, and regulate
private exchange of goods in semi-barter transac-
tions (Ezzamel, 2002c, 2004, 2005; Ezzamel & Hos-
kin, 2002). Further, accounting for taxation
facilitated the functioning of the centralized state
through an orderly cycle that entailed assessing tax-
able capacity, measuring actual crops, levying tax
liability and collecting and transporting taxes to
state stores for future redistribution to the popula-
tion as provisions (Ezzamel, 2002a, 2002b). These
activities were underpinned by a notion of reciproc-
ity and order between subjects as tax payers to the
state and the state as a provider for its citizens.
The visualization of the rituals of accounting
inscriptions that (i) emphasized the importance of
o?erings to gods in sustaining cosmic and worldly
order; (ii) regulated social and economic order in
society and underpinned kingship (e.g., workshops,
building projects, semi-barter exchange, Ezzamel,
2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2004); and (iii) preserved the
cult of the dead via private o?erings (Ezzamel,
2002c, 2005) together underscored the coherence
of the three realms of the ancient Egyptian world:
the cosmos, earth and netherworld. Understanding
duality (receipts/payments), reciprocity (e.g., mea-
sure-for measure in private exchange), organization
(e.g., the grid structure of temple income accounts,
Ezzamel, 2005), and temporally-ordered, spatially-
embedded entries through the combining of numer-
ical and linguistic signs endowed the accounts with
visibility, transparency and order. Such order
instilled an ethic of coherence and balance that con-
nected with the view of cosmic and worldly order
aspired to by the ancient Egyptians. It also sorted
and systematized activities, minimized randomiza-
tion (Bateson, 2000), and created a seemingly har-
monious world with a clear articulation of what is
desirable and what is not (Douglas, 2002). For the
populace, this order was invested not only in the
gods but also importantly in kingship, as re?ected
in the presumed ability of the Pharaoh as sovereign
to preserve peace and security (Hobbes, 1991) and
uphold Maat.
Implications for the theorizing of accounting
What import do the observations made above
have for the theorizing of accounting? One way to
address this question is to engage with Meyer’s
(1986) work on the contexts that give rise to
accounting as this o?ers the potential to explore
the extent to which the insights drawn from this
paper map onto his ideas. Meyer (Meyer, 1986, p.
353) treats ‘‘accounting as re?ecting the organiza-
tionally uncontrolled monetarization of socially
invisible value, bookkeeping as re?ecting more
organizationally controlled and visible value, and
other forms of counting as likely to re?ect the com-
plexity of entity construction.”
12
Meyer (Meyer,
1986, p. 351) further contends that when society is
in control of its own de?nition of reality, and is
organized around social control and authority we
may witness ‘‘orgies of counting”. Meyer (1986, p.
347) understands accounting as ‘‘the set of special-
ized systems for abstracting the monetary value of
stocks and exchanges.” Focusing upon contempo-
rary Western societies, he argues that an increased
use of accounting is related to the expansion of cul-
tural rationalization: ‘‘Environments create organi-
zational elements such as accounting and
accountants, make it easy and necessary for organi-
zations to use them, and treat organizations that
have them as by de?nition more legitimate than oth-
ers” (Meyer, 1986, p. 346). Meyer discusses three
aspects of cultural rationalizations. First, rational-
izations that standardize and ‘‘tame the social
meaning of the components of activity – actors,
objects, and actions” (Meyer, 1986, p. 347); these
are held to promote greater use of accounting. Sec-
ondly, rationalizations that reduce standardized ele-
ments to a common yardstick, such as credit units in
universities but more importantly monetarization.
Thirdly, rationalizations through causal integration
around notions of exchange or production, all
related to monetarization. Thus, for Meyer,
accounting is generated and promoted by ‘‘the
monetarized organization of means-ends” (Meyer,
1986, p. 349).
Evident in Meyer’s view is a deterministic tone,
whereby the rise of accounting is seen as a response
to the demands of cultural rationalization in organi-
zations and society. For him, whenever the status
and functions of particular entities, such as individ-
uals or institutions, are delineated through explicit
and lawful rationalization and formal rules, the
likelihood of accounting expansion becomes very
12
For Meyer (1986, p. 350): ‘‘The key issue, of course, is
monetarization, with its two aspects: the secure integration of an
element into de?nite myths of means-ends relations, and the
attachment of the element into one or another entity given reality
in the value system de?ning existence.”
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 375
limited. What Meyer has in mind is ‘‘the complete
organization”, complete in the sense of being highly
bureaucratized through clear division of labour, a
clearly delineated hierarchical control structure,
and a complete cultural rationalization that is
monopolized by the organization itself and
inscribed in its formal rule structure (Meyer, 1986,
p. 350). In such a context, asks Meyer:
‘‘why would accounting, beyond the most limited
record-keeping, be useful? One might ?nd some
inspection systems monitoring control, and some
simple counting systems keeping track of ?ows
among units in the division of labor. But
accounting, with a perspective on reality indepen-
dent of the legitimate bureaucratic rules, would
seem a bit redundant, or even potentially disrup-
tive, since the accounting story and the o?cial
one would almost certainly diverge.” (Meyer,
1986, p. 350)
This ‘‘macrosociological” (Meyer, 1986, p. 348)
explanation suggests that accounting does not
emerge only in local contexts totally divorced from
the macro level, but it nonetheless has strong func-
tionalist tones. In common with institutional sociol-
ogy thinking, the environment is privileged over the
local context (Meyer, 1986, p. 348). Moreover, the
existence of accounting is justi?ed only in terms of
it being useful, one may ask for whom and from
what particular vantage point? Absent in Meyer’s
thesis is a recognition of the wider roles that
accounting plays in organizations and society (Burc-
hell et al., 1980), including the ritualistic and the
rhetorical (Aho, 1985; Thompson, 1991). As the
opening quote of this paper suggests, accounting
calculations can be a powerful means of ordering
the lives of humans in the image of god. Further,
the suggestion that accounting may be marginalized
because the accounting story and the o?cial one are
likely to diverge seems to be implicitly based on two
problematic assumptions. First, that the accounting
information generated within an organization is
only that which is sanctioned formally, thereby mar-
ginalizing the scope for informal accounting infor-
mation (e.g. Ezzamel & Willmott, 1998). Secondly,
that those who promote the formal story are aware
of the capabilities of accounting to generate con?ict-
ing stories, yet lack the ability to manipulate
accounting numbers to produce the stories they
desire.
Thus, even in the context of contemporary Wes-
tern societies, Meyer’s theorization of accounting,
despite its powerful implications, is problematical.
The limitation of his theorizing can be made clearer
by drawing on the ancient Egyptian material dis-
cussed above. In contrast to his insistence on mone-
tarization as one of the de?ning characteristics of
accounting, this paper has shown that while not
monetarized, ancient accounting developed com-
mon denominators or ‘yardsticks’, to use Meyer’s
terminology, in the form of monies of account, such
as the deben, or the khar. Such monies of account
served to integrate ancient exchange, work, and pro-
duction activities in ancient Egypt. While it would
be presumptuous to suggest that ancient monies of
account are capable of reproducing the same wealth
consequences that are ascribed to monetarization by
Meyer, it is nonetheless relevant to argue that a
fairly sophisticated accounting technology could
emerge in the absence of monetarization.
Further, Meyer’s thesis on the rise of accounting
lacks an appreciation of historical contingency.
Rather than being purely the product of cultural
rationalization, the genesis of Egyptian accounting
goes back to, or even precedes, the genesis of writ-
ing, with both technologies having a constitutive
role of the rationalizations that emerged in ancient
Egypt post the invention of accounting (Davies &
Friedman, 1998). Moreover, with a highly codi?ed
system of beliefs, strong social control, and a pow-
erful central authority, we witness a proliferation
of not only counting, contra Meyer, but also of
accounting through state institutions (Ezzamel,
2002a, 2002c), the temple (Ezzamel, 2005), private
exchange (Ezzamel & Hoskin, 2002), business and
the household (Ezzamel, 2002b). The ancient Egyp-
tians constructed seemingly time-invariant de?ni-
tions of ‘reality’, in the cosmos, on earth, and in
the netherworld, and developed performative ritu-
als, of which accounting was a key part, to order
their world. Instead of seeing accounting playing a
minor role, as Meyer would contend, we encounter
major reliance on detailed, highly developed tech-
nologies of the accounting craft, and an elevation
of its priests, the scribes, to major positions of in?u-
ence in society (Raccoti, 1997). Finally, ancient
Egypt lacked ‘‘market organizations” and signi?-
cant ‘‘private organizations”, the two examples
Meyer (1986, p. 351) cites as evidence of the need
for more accounting and accountants because these
organizations are not ‘‘self-su?cient, or tightly
linked to institutional de?nitions that insulate
[them] from reality”. Yet, in ancient Egypt we wit-
ness a preponderance of accounting techniques in
376 M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380
state projects, workshops, manufacturies, taxation,
and temples just as much as in private business
and exchange. Once accounting can be viewed as a
potent technology for the construction and preser-
vation of order, a case for the rise of the accounting
craft and its scribes can be made in many human
societies across time and space.
Conclusion
The ancient Egyptian evidence is suggestive of a
notion of order, whether cosmic or worldly (social,
political and economic), that emphasizes non-ran-
dom organization into patterns (Alexander, 1982).
While being responsive to Alexander’s (Alexander,
1982, p. 90) call to engage with a ‘‘thoroughly gen-
eric conceptualization” of order, whereby action
and order are decoupled, a key argument of this
paper is that accounting functioned as a performa-
tive ritual that created and sustained order, and
worked on individuals and groups to bring order
and action closer together. Although order in
ancient Egypt may be conceptualized in terms of
‘‘the probability that individuals will act in a pat-
terned fashion, not to the certainty that any individ-
ual will do so” (Alexander, 1982, p. 105), this paper
contends that the intervention of accounting in the
religious, social and economic domains of ancient
Egypt worked to enhance the probability of congru-
ent action occurring. At the worldly level, account-
ing visualized the activities and achievements of
various sectors of society and provided an incentive
for individuals to demonstrate that their actions
were consistent with the requisite qualities of social
and economic order. Maintaining this order in turn
strengthened the preservation of the political status
quo, as social and economic stability buttressed the
claim of the Pharaoh to kingship as his undisputed
right. At the cosmic level, accounting for o?erings
served to emphasize a measure of reciprocity that
underpinned the fragile equilibrium in the cosmos
and reasserted the Pharaoh’s divine right to king-
ship, since he alone possessed the privilege to make
o?erings to the gods on behalf of his subjects. In this
sense, accounting functioned just like any ritual that
‘‘creates harmonious worlds with ranked and
ordered populations playing their appointed parts
(Douglas, 2002, p. 90).
The discussion section sought to forge a number
of connections between accounting and order. It has
been argued that rather than simply being a ration-
alist functional technique employed in organizations
that inhabit the social, economic and political
spheres, accounting is a technology that is funda-
mental to the construction and preservation of
order, the foundations on which socio-economic
and political structures are based. In ancient Egypt,
accounting functioned as ancient spatial and tempo-
ral ordering devices, helping to condition the mean-
ing of order upon the administration of social space
and keep society structured (Bauman, 1993). Unlike
the scenario that Giddens (1991) develops which
emphasizes the boundedness of the modern
nation-state exhibiting the separation of space and
time, what we encounter in ancient Egypt is a con-
text where space and time are intertwined, and
where accounting rituals play a key part in under-
pinning such interconnection as part of the created
reality of an ordered society.
Perhaps once the rami?cations of accounting
explored in this paper have been developed further,
we may become more receptive to suggestions that
would otherwise pass for mere assertions. For
example, we may begin to explore the extent to
which the documented dominance of numbers in
Western societies as a means of governing life (Boy-
le, 2000; Chua, 1986; Porter, 1995; Power, 1997;
Rose, 1991) is culturally speci?c to the West, or
instead the latest manifestation of a broader and
far reaching tendency that transcends cultures and
times. Also, Cleverly’s (1973) suggestion that
accounting functions as a form of religious cere-
mony – a rain dance, can be taken more seriously,
and its implications explored more fully. Similarly,
the parallels drawn by Gambling (1977) between
accounting practices and witchcraft can begin to
be subjected to greater scrutiny in order to gain
greater appreciation of the roles of accounting in
these contexts than has hitherto been possible.
For example, the rationalization o?ered by Gam-
bling (1977) for accounting as a means of rendering
possible the accommodation of ‘awkward facts’ or
simply dealing with uncertainty can be extended to
incorporate the construction and perpetuation of
order as an organizing framework in society. Rather
than simply focus upon examining the role of
accounting in accommodating ‘awkward facts’, the
question may be one of exploring accounting’s abil-
ity to constitute such phenomena as knowable,
manageable and orderable through its performative
rituals. Similarly, the possible link between account-
ing and the supernatural, or cosmic, should be
explored more fully. When Gambling (Gambling,
1977, p. 150) observes ‘‘As it stands, accounting is
M. Ezzamel / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 348–380 377
not a matter of the supernatural, but seems to have
something of political activity about it, all be it with
a small p!”, this observation may be seen to under-
pin a restrictive view of accounting. What this paper
has argued is that, at least in the context of ancient
Egyptian culture, a symbiotic relationship between
the cosmic/supernatural and accounting was forged
to construct notions of cosmic order which directly
impacted the meaning of social, political, and eco-
nomic order. Through the itemization, enumeration
and valuation of objects and activities, accounting
?xes, regularizes, and orders these items and activi-
ties, emphasizes their interconnections, and identi-
?es their locations in time and space. Further, just
because linkages between accounting and the super-
natural could be forged, this should not be taken to
imply that as a discipline, accounting is not suscep-
tible to systematic and scholarly enquiry. Again, to
quote Gambling (1985, p. 421): ‘‘we do have an
underdeveloped science [accounting] here, which is
underdeveloped because it is almost impossible to
research it! This ought not to surprise anyone,
because it must be a very odd sort of science, which
deals with social reactions to the uncertainties of the
universe.” Contra Gambling, rather than viewing
accounting as an ‘‘underdeveloped science. . . that
is almost impossible to research”, it is precisely these
remarkable challenges that emerge when a connec-
tion is made between accounting and ‘‘the uncer-
tainties of the universe” that are opening up new
and very exciting research agendas in accounting.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Barbara Adam for encouraging
me to write this paper. I acknowledge the helpful
comments made by the participants at the venues,
where earlier drafts of this paper were presented
and by Stephen Quirke, and John Roberts. Special
thanks are due to Hugh Willmott and Stephen
Walker for their insightful comments and to the
two anonymous reviewers for their constructive crit-
icism. I thank Adam Ezzamel for translating some
of the source material from French into English.
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